Dear Bernard Cornwell, I will try to keep this short, but have little hope. I have recently returned to Australia from travels in parts of France, Portugal and Spain, which I told you about a while ago (thanks for your comments at that time). Several points (punctuation and paragraphing fall apart when converted through your system, so I have used asterisks to mark paragraphs. I hope it works): * In all the airport and other bookshops in Spain and Portugal, with English language books I found no copies of Sharpes stories. Perhaps you might speak to your publishers. This should be a great potential market. * In Portugal and western Spain I had planned to see as much as I could of places Sharpe had distinguished by his presence. I was somewhat handicapped by losing my annotated maps, guidebooks and notes, in Brussels when my suitcase was stolen, but nevertheless saw a lot that I wouldnt have otherwise seen. * The high point for me was seeing Almeida and Fort Concepcion. The former is restored (except for the central destruction which the Portuguese attribute to the French invasions, rather than Sharpe)) and the latter definitely not restored. Nothing but birds, wildflowers, lizards, a couple of rabbits and blue sky. And me, of course. It was fabulous in itself, but both are of a size that the mind can grasp, and the comparison between the two enabled me, at least, to see how a fortress might work in practice. I also had a lovely time driving through the local roads to get to them both. * I couldnt make sense of Fuentes dOnores. It is effectively conjoined with Vilar Formosa these days, despite the now non-existent border and the huge freeway/motorway bisecting the conurbation. Since I got back, I have looked again at my copy of Julian Pagets Wellingtons Peninsular War (1990). He says it is still a village, but I think, now, no more. A number of his other descriptions suffer under the test of time. I didnt allow enough time to allow for the changes in the last twenty-odd years and my (lack of) stamina. (here and elsewhere, sigh!) Still it is an invaluable guide. * I am staggered at the nature of the country and the distances that the Allied Army covered in Spain and Portugal on foot. How did they do it, especially given their rations and equipment? (Not to mention the steep slopes in Coimbra and Portugal.) * I found that reading Sharpes stories gave me some insight into military tactics. Basically (until the last fifty years of modern warfare): take the high ground and hold it, whatever the cost. This seemed to be the case in the Somme which I also visited (especially at Vimy Ridge where my Canadian confreres assisted by the Commonwealth brothers in arms held the ground!) * I was also able to visit a weapons museum (part of the Museum of Arts and Industry) in St Etienne, near Lyons in France. Your novels enabled me to look at a rifle and think beyond the beautiful ivory inlay and say Oh, thats what a flintlock is!. * So thank you for the various contributions that you and Sharpe made to my recent travels. Elizabeth Smith, Canberra, Australia