The author surprisingly gets a bit wrong on his own Sharpe chronology, including his rank and various characters, how much this will irk you will depend on how immersed you are in the journey of Sharpe and his timelines. Bernard Cornwell was born in London, raised in Essex and worked for the BBC for eleven years before meeting Judy, his American wife. Nice to see his murdered wife alive again as Bernard Cornwall fills in gaps in this 23 book narrative. Folio commissioned Hokyoung Kim for the artwork, while the late author’s wife, Wendy Benchley, provides a fascinating new introduction.

This book uses the real-life Battle of Almaraz which took place 18-19 May 1812 where the British and Portuguese were fighting the French in Almaraz, Spain. He then joined BBC's Nationwide and was promoted to become head of current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland. Featuring a fascinating introduction by Val McDermid and new illustrations by Juan Esteban Rodríguez, each copy has been signed by both the introducer and the illustrator. We meet again major Hogan who this time opines ‘A wise man once said that the best way to win a war is to do it without fighting’ (p210).Sharpe is dispatched to a new battleground: the maze of Paris streets where lines blur between friend and foe. In 1987, he also published Redcoat, an American Revolutionary War novel set in Philadelphia during its 1777 occupation by the British. Crowbarring him in actually makes the main plot less clear – I have no idea what really developed from it. They’re tons of fun and you don’t have to switch your brain on too much while reading/watching them. And the impossible is exactly what the formidable Captain Sharpe is asked to do when he's sent on an undercover mission to a small village in the Spanish countryside, far behind enemy lines.

The protagonist is an archer who participates in the Battle of Agincourt, another devastating defeat suffered by the French in the Hundred Years War. And only Sharpe – with just his cunning, his courage and a small band of rogues to rely on – stands in their way . I was given a pretty good sense of the geography and where things are in relation to each other which isn’t always the case.Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). Set in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, this story focuses on British General “Daddy” Hill’s successful campaign to prevent the French armies commanded by Marshall Soult and Marshall Marmont from combining to create a massive force that the British would have had difficulty fighting. The colour frontispiece and black-and-white scratchboard illustrations capture Sharpe in the midst of the conflict, blood flying from his sabre as he fights for his life.