Sharpe, at last, meets Napoleon. I was worried about this, but it’s probably the best passage in the book (and right at the beginning, which is a bad thing). Sharpe then goes on to meet Lord Cochrane, the ‘sea devil’ who was the inspiration for C.S. Forester’s Hornblower and for Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey. This book was never made into a TV programme. The TV series began with Sharpe’s Rifles and ends at Waterloo, with two ‘made-up’ stories in the sequence – Sharpe’s Mission and Sharpe’s Justice. There’s also a compilation tape called Sharpe’s Legend and a brilliant CD of the music from the series.
