If Sharpe’s Challenge is loosely based on the first novels (chronologically speaking), will Hakeswill be there, or will he remain dead? I can’t recall meeting a character that I so thoroughly detested, but couldn’t get enough of. I suspect that Pete Postlethwaite’s interpretation of your character for the TV series had a lot to do with it.

Have you read any of Simon Scarrow’s Roman Britain novels? When I first met his two main protagonists, Macro the Centurion and Cato his young Optio, I was convinced that it was your work under a nom de plume. I told him this, and he considered it praise indeed to be compared or mistaken for you. Thanks. Nick B