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Subject: Bernard Cromwell's Sharpe novels
Wicked Chinchilla    6/3/2009 1:51:15 PM
I was wondering if anyone has read any of Mr. Cromwell's Sharpe novels? I am looking for some more reading material and have come across a couple mentions of this. Are they any good? For a little background about my reading appetites, in terms of fiction I absolutely devoured Patrick O'Briens Aubrey/Maturin novels. Are Cromwells basically equivalent? Just curious before I think about getting involved in another long series of books.
 
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prometheus       6/4/2009 5:18:00 AM

I was wondering if anyone has read any of Mr. Cromwell's Sharpe novels? I am looking for some more reading material and have come across a couple mentions of this. Are they any good? For a little background about my reading appetites, in terms of fiction I absolutely devoured Patrick O'Briens Aubrey/Maturin novels. Are Cromwells basically equivalent? Just curious before I think about getting involved in another long series of books.


They are very good, his research on the time frame and the battles are impeccable and he tries to maintain as many of the real historical characters as he can.
 
Basically it chart sthe career of an enlisted man, who through an act of suicidal bravery is promoted to the officer ranks, something obivously virtually unheard of in the Napoleonic British army.
 
Start with Sharpes Rifles, it's the first one he wrote - it's not chronologically first, he wrote several prequels about Sharpe in India between 1799 and 1805. However, it's just more natural to start with Moore's retreat in 1809 and go form there.
 
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Wicked Chinchilla       6/4/2009 8:55:13 AM
Thanks for the information.  Next time I run to the bookstore I will have to pick it up.
 
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eldnah       6/12/2009 8:56:12 AM
May I also highly recommend the Matthew Hervey novels ( 10 so far )  by Brigadier Allan Mallinson, a retired cavalry officer, about the life and adventures of a British cavalry officer during the Napoleonic Era with diversions in India and South Africa. Much in the spirit of the Sharpe novels but from the mounted side. Mallinson also wrote a well regarded history tittled Light Dragoons and is a defence columist for the Daily Telegraph. 
 
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Parmenion    Hornblower   6/12/2009 9:33:24 AM
Also if you're interested in Naval Warfare in the Napoleonic Era I would recommend the Horatio Hornblower books- they're classics by C.S. Forrester. The battle scenes are great and Horatio is a really great character- over the books he works his way up from a petty officer to a commodore. Apparently Hemmingway and Churchill both loved them, and C.S. Forrester can write better than Bernard Cromwell, so I'd give them a go http://www.strategypage.com/CuteSoft_Client/CuteEditor/Images/face1.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" alt="" />.
 
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Wicked Chinchilla       6/12/2009 12:35:18 PM
Excellent!  Thanks to you both.  I have several good starting points into series' that will keep me going for probably over a year now.  (Not an excessive amount of time to read with a 10 month old crawling around).
 
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Armchair Private    Flashman!   6/12/2009 8:04:22 PM
As good, or dare I say even better, and of the period, are George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels:
 
Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who runs from danger or hides cowering in fear, betrays or abandons acquaintances at the slightest incentive, bullies and beats servants with gusto, beds every available woman, carries off any loot he can grab, gambles and boozes enthusiastically, and yet, through a combination of luck and cunning, ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.
 
ht*p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman
 
The first instalment of the Flashman Papers sees the fag-roasting rotter from Tom Brown's Schooldays commence his military career as a reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan. Expelled from Rugby for drunkenness, and none too welcome at home after seducing his father's mistress, the young Flashman embarks on a military career with Lord Cardigan's Hussars. En route to Afghanistan, our hero hones his skills as a soldier, duellist, imposter, coward and amorist (mastering all 97 ways of Hindu love-making during a brief sojourn in Calcutta), before being pressed into reluctant service as a secret agent. His Afghan adventures culminate in a starring role in that great historic disaster, the Retreat from Kabul.
 
ht*p://www.amazon.co.uk/Flashman-Papers-George-MacDonald-Fraser/dp/0006511252
 
Just as much action and a page turner, but laugh out loud funny too. Flashman is like an anti James Bond, and Fraser puts him right in the middle of some of the most famous episodes of the time, from finding and presenting the Koh I Noor to Queen Vic to leading the charge of the light brigade (he blundered...), the thin red line, suviving the the black hole of calcutta, the battle of the little bighorn, the other survivor of the first anglo-afghan war...etc
 
Have a look in 2011!
 
 
 
 
 
 
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