Nosey

The gentleman above is Arthur Wellesley, known to the soldiers under his command as 'Nosey' and to history as the first Duke of Wellington. The portrait was done by a Japanese artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The career of Bernard Cornwell's fictional British soldier Richard Sharpe parallels Wellesley's career; Sharpe fights alongside the future Duke of Wellington from Assaye to Waterloo.

In the historical notes accompanying one of the Sharpe novels, Cornwell mentioned Elizabeth Longford's biography of Wellesley, Wellington: The Years of the Sword, as a particularly valuable source of information. I spent several years seraching for a copy, but to no avail. The book is out of print, and that part of me that enjoys the book hunt refused to resort to the expediency of ordering Longford's work on line. The answer, in the end, was simple enough: go to the library. The Quincy public library held a battered copy of The Years of the Sword and I've the past week dipping into it's pages.