Dear Bernard, I was interested by the questions (and your remarks) about Wellington, as I have begun to take quite an interest in the man, due in main to my love of the Sharpe novels. I read that he once said, of his being an Irishman, that being born in a stable does not make a man a horse. Do you think he was ashamed to be Irish? I am an Irishman myself, and therefore am aghast at such a notion! But I think in those times Ireland was England’s poor relation, and being Irish was not something one would trumpet about. Paul Reid