It frightens me to think that I first read Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma almost fifty years ago. And, I have to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it very much as a teenager. The adventures of Fabrice del Dongo weren’t particularly exciting, in my eyes, and the author’s depiction of the Battle of Waterloo seemed almost farcical. But, of course, back … [Read more...] about Waterloo – Women on the Battlefield and the Lengths They’ll Go To!
Marianne Tambour
Waterloo – Ten Things You (Almost Certainly) Didn’t Know
The wars that ended with Waterloo were known as “ The Great War” until 1917 The battles fought in Belgium, during the Waterloo Campaign, over those few brief days in June 1815 brought an end to 22 years of almost continuous fighting between the European powers in what had been, effectively, the first “world war” – and historians estimate that … [Read more...] about Waterloo – Ten Things You (Almost Certainly) Didn’t Know
Waterloo – 200 Years of Waterloo Historical Fiction
The sulphurous stench of gun smoke obscures our view of Waterloo, even two hundred years after the battle. Over this past bicentenary year, the clamour of conflict continues to sometimes deafen us. But that fog of war and the screams of injured outrage are now generally only the result of debate that still ebbs and flows around this turning point … [Read more...] about Waterloo – 200 Years of Waterloo Historical Fiction
Waterloo – Marianne Tambour and the Music of Battle
I hope that there are sections of The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour that readers can "hear" as they turn the pages, and particularly those that detail some of the French Napoleonic army's music. Singing and band music were an integral part of army life, so here we have some of the tunes, the songs, the drum and trumpet calls that would have … [Read more...] about Waterloo – Marianne Tambour and the Music of Battle