Dear Bernard, please don’t ever stop writing! do you have any plans to do a signing at W.H.Smith’s in Paris-or any other bookshop in Paris? And lastly, are Lady Grace Hale’s Selbys related to Dorian Gray’s? I seem to remember that his mother (like Grace, the daughter of the Earl of Selby)fell madly in love with and married a Sharpe-ish type character who was an infantry soldier and most definitely not a gentleman,and she died in childbirth like poor Grace(but sadly the child didn’t and grew into the appalling Dorian). Did you have anywhere particular in mind when you wrote about Lucille’s house in Normandy? My husband, who is French and has a very “large and penniless farmhouse with a very inconvenient ditch around it” in Normandy, has always been extremely jealous of the amount of time his wife spends with Sharpe was slightly mollified to learn that Sharpe in later life doesn’t like to travel further than Caen (about half an hour awayfrom us) I think he also hopes that if Sharpe can grow to love Normandy then maybe even his wife can!

Elle