I had to let you know how much I am enjoying your book Waterloo:  The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles, it’s wonderful.  You have captured the essence of the battle of Waterloo and the other battles around it.  I feel as if I know the people involved almost personally.  I love the eye witness accounts and I think you have been very fair in your treatment of all the different factions involved.  It is as if the 200 years between them and us have been wiped away.  I have recently begun reading the Sharpe books and I am already addicted to them.  I have come by a strange route to them, via ‘Vanity Fair’ and Georgette Heyer’s wonderful  ‘An Infamous Army’ and ‘The Spanish Bride’, the true story of Harry Smith.  It’s a shame that Heyer gets ignored these days with her brilliant account of Waterloo in ‘An Infamous Army’.  Have you ever read it?  I wondered if you might have, with your description of Lady Jane’s golden dress at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in ‘Sharpe’s Waterloo’, as Heyer has her heroine dressed in a similar way.

Susan Johnson