This is one of those gems you can only find in a second hand bookshop. The tatty cover of the edition I found of this relatively thin novel had been well worn in it’s 35 year life. For the life of me I don’t know how second hand book sellers know what is worth keeping and what needs to be thrown. This thin novel is the sort to be thrown away but I think it was saved by it’s authors name alone. He wrote the “Hornblower” series which I have yet to start reading but have only heard good things.

This story is a totally non nautical story of a very intelligent mathematician and physics teacher who discovers that a magnetic field can not only be cancelled out by his new invention, a permanent magnet can loose it’s magnetic effect completely. Through a set of circumstances he tries to use the device to force the world to disarm so there cannot be war again. It is easy to forget just how magnets are crucial to our modern lives, so 30 years after this book was printed the story is still just as valid and realistic. Except this book wasn’t the first edition, C S Forrester wrote this story over 70 years ago in the 1930’s.

The story of the Peacemaker is fabulously told and if you come across it, pick it up to read.

This battle has a special meaning to me as it took place on my birthday. No, I’m not almost 200 years old – the day and month match that’s all. I only discovered that fact this year and simply for that reason I’ve been delaying reading this book until I’d read as many other Sharpe books as I could. It’s also the reason I would like to go and see the battlefield and learn more about what happened. War is vile, may it never be repeated now or in the future.

Sharpe arrives at Waterloo in the service of the Prince of Orange. He had retired from the last war with his wife into France and Napoleon’s return has put him into conflict with people he knew from his new home village. He is gallant as always, resourceful, take vengeance on his enemies (despite all you learn of Sharpe you learn never to become his enemy) and leaving the Prince of Oranges incompetence rescues his old regiment from definite destruction to turn the tide of the elite French troops about to end the redcoats time on earth.

Utterly well researched (I do like the historical detail Bernard Cornwell includes at the end of all his novels to separate fact from fiction) it still remains a tragic story of a time when tens of thousands of men killed tens of thousands of men. Superbly told, another high rootie rating book.