Author(s): Bernard Cornwell

Fiction

It is the spring of 1809 and a small British army is stationed in Lisbon when Marshal Soult begins the French invasion of northern Portugal. No one knows whether the British will fight or leave, but there is little choice for Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and his squad of riflemen who are sent into the beleaguered city of Oporto to rescue a British mother and daughter who have chosen to stay rather than flee southwards. But what seems like a straightforward mission becomes tangled in betrayal when Kate Savage disappears. Sharpe, with Sergeant Patrick Harper and a score of riflemen, is cut off in the city when the bridge over the river Douro is broken. They join forces with a group of fugitive Portuguese soldiers and try to fight their way back to the British lines, but their orders are overridden by a mysterious English officer, who instructs them to remain in northern Portugal. Colonel Christopher excels in high diplomacy and low cunning, and his activities lead Sharpe and his riflemen into treacherous danger. While the French are consolidating their hold on the north of the country, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, arrives to take command in the south. He immediately mounts his own counter-attack in a brilliant campaign that will rout the French. Sharpe becomes the hunter instead of the hunted and seizes the chance to rescue the missing Kate Savage and pursue the man who thought to sacrifice Sharpe and his riflemen for his own ambition. Amidst the wreckage of a defeated army, in the storm lashed hills of the Portuguese frontier, Sharpe takes a terrible revenge. Sharpe's Havoc is a classic Sharpe story, a return to Portugal with Richard Sharpe in fighting form in the company of Sergeant Patrick Harper, Captain Hogan and Sharpe's beloved Greenjackets. Bernard Cornwell worked for BBC TV for seven years, mostly as producer on the