Dear Bernard Thanks for awakening an interest in history in me that has been latent since school. I am enjoying the Sharpe books tremendously, especially as I used to live in Gibraltar and have visisted many of the Spanish towns you mention. I now live in Shetland, a place that has an empathy toward all things Viking, so I am looking forward to the Last Kingdom series. A couple of questions for you: Have you been tempted to write a Sharpe style story set in the present day? How do you think a modern greenjacket officer like Sharpe would have got on in the Falklands, Bosnia, Afghanistan or Iraq? Finally, when I read The Gallows Thief I was struck by the similarites between Rider Sandman and Sharpe. Was it originally meant to be a Sharpe story perhaps? Yours, Nick Bentley