Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Enemy

Sir Augustus Farthingdale plagiarized his book mainly from Major Chamberlin's book, and now I must confess to a plagiarism. Sharpe's Christmas meal, and the hare stew that Pot-au-Feu ate in the Convent, all came from Elizabeth David's magnificent French Provincial Cooking, a book that has given me more pleasure than most. If any reader would like to recreate Sharpe's Christmas meal (a rewarding experience!) then I refer to them to Mrs David's magnificent work. Potage de marron Dauphinois (Chestnut soup), Perdreau Roti au Four (Roast Partridge), and the Cassoulet de Toulouse a la Menagere, to which I added roast potatoes for Sharpe's sake, and changed the recipe to fit the foods which might have been available in winter Spain. The hare stew exalts in the name Le Civet de Lievre de Diane de Chateaumorand. Strictly speaking it is not a stew, but I will not attempt the impossible and try to rival Elizabeth David as a cookery writer. My thanks to her.

Beyond the army of deserters and the rocket system, all else in Sharpe's Enemy is fiction. There is no Gateway of God, nor was any battle fought over the Christmas of 1812. The 60th existed, the Royal American Rifles, but all other Regiments are fictitious. I wanted to write one story that reflected the last winter when the British would be pinned back again in Portugal. Despite Napoleon's crushing defeat in Russia it must still have seemed to many soldiers that the war could last forever, yet within months Wellington's strategy changed the whole Peninsular War and never again were the British to retreat. Sharpe and Harper will march again.