Dear Bernard, I suppose all your readers have their own mental picture of Sharpe…each different from your own. I hope it will not distress you to hear that my mental image of Sharpe is closer to Neil Adam’s Tarzan bookcover artwork than to Sean Bean – although my Sharpe does have a Sheffield accent. I read all the Tarzan books as a boy; he was my first hero. Later on, I found another, different hero in Hornblower and then, in the last few years, Sharpe. While I understand that Hornblower was an inspiration for Sharpe, I cannot help but wonder if you too read Tarzan as a boy – beyond sharing black hair and facial scars, Sharpe and Tarzan seem to me to have the same grim determination and savage will to survive when all seems lost. With grateful respect, Stephen Molz