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Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Regiment

ISBN: 0006174523

The difference between you and me and Richard Sharpe is that Richard Sharpe doesn't give a bugger. And that, for what I believe is primarily a male readership, is the core attraction. With very little to lose, and not coming from the 'right' background for an officer, "not a gentleman", Sharpe is quite unperturbed by challenging the establishment and every lame excuse for leadership in Wellington's army that he encounters.

Combine Sharpe's general disdain for authority with a real panache for risk taking, fighting and being alarmingly attractive to women and it's little surprise that this breed of escapism has a legion of followers and fifteen feature length television films in tow.

In Sharpe's Regiment all of these ingredients are massively on display with Sharpe returning to England from the Iberian Peninsular to hunt down the missing second battalion of his regiment. He does this by going undercover and the reader takes great joy in knowing that the buffoons are going to get their comeuppance once Sharpe is revealed for who he really is. This isn't a great literary novel but the storytelling is so wonderful that I don't think any Sharpe aficionados actually give a bugger.

Reviewed By: Richard Hawksworth

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