Dear Bernard Cornwell, The Duke of Marlborough is another exception, a brillian one, to the rule of good military administrators being less than stellar field commanders. But you are probably right about his being a poor subject for fiction. It was a career that seems to beggar invention. I believe I recall from Henry Steele Commager’s condensation of Churchill’s biography that a corporal [William?] Bishop kept a diary and wrote a bit of doggerel on Marlborough’s dismissal as Captain General of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV– God and the solder all men adore At the brink of war, but not before. The danger past, both are alike requited, God forgot and the brave soldier slighted. I look forward to The Lords of the North. Tom Anderson