Hi Bernard, firstly I would like to thank you for your outstanding novels. Particularly the Grail Quest series. I’ve been thinking on your Sharpe’s father “riddle” as of late and would like to know if I’m going in the right direction. I’ve started with the world Bachelor (8 letters, happy person.) I’ve taken out your initials (BC: reference to “me”) and replaced them with AM (The questioners initials). This has given me the letters aheloram. Now this is obviously a completely different result to the guy who suggested smuggler. His horse reference was the letters gg, mine is that it contains the letters for the word “mare”. Should I keep going with this line of reasoning? or start again? Many thanks Ben