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Sharpe News!

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“He’ll fall in love with anything in a petticoat. I’ve seen his type before. Got the sense of a half-witted sheep when it comes to women.”

This is what Richard Sharpe’s friend, Pat Harper, says about him in SHARPE’S RIFLES, which I recently re-read in my quest to read all the Sharpe series in order. I’ve also just read SHARPE’S HAVOC so according to Bernard Cornwell’s website, the next will be SHARPE’S EAGLE.

Sharpe certainly lacks judgement where women are concerned, but I suppose he can’t help it, since there is always at least one intriguing beauty in each episode. The women in the series are a bit like Bond girls, though. One can’t invest too heavily in their relationships with Sharpe because they inevitably get killed off, betray him or marry someone else to make room for the next one. But some of the film heroines have left an impression on me, among them Teresa, the Spanish guerillera who’s a match for Sharpe’s bravery and toughness; the wily Marquesa from SHARPE’S HONOR; and of course Lucille, with whom he briefly finds happiness.

I was sorry to see Lucille killed off so that the series could continue as Sharpe returns to India. In my earlier post on Sharpe in India I mentioned that I had mixed feelings on the success of translating elements from the book SHARPE’S TIGER (which occurs when Sharpe is a young soldier in India) to SHARPE’S CHALLENGE which is set post-Waterloo. I still found it worth watching.

I’ve just discovered there’s a new Sharpe adventure, Sharpe’s Peril, also set in India, with a new “Sharpe Girls” played by Beatrice Rosen and Nandana Sen. You can learn more about the new episodes at ITV. Part 1 already aired and Part 2 airs on Sunday. Unfortunately you can only watch the videos online if you are in the UK. Boo!

I couldn’t even run the trailer at ITV though I was able to watch one at www.sharpefilm.com. I can’t tell if BBC America plans to run it, so I may have to wait until it hits Netflix. I find it hard to judge a film from its trailer; of course I will have to see it anyway, sooner or later. I can’t miss the chance for a Sharpe fix!

Which of the women in the Sharpe books or films do you find most interesting? Any who could be inspiration for a proper romance heroine?

Do you think this new installment in Sharpe’s adventures looks promising?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

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Dress For Success

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In researching my latest hero, a Sharpe-based soldier, I’ve been delving into Scott Hughes Myerly‘s British Military Spectacle. I highly recommend the book; every page has some essential, interesting nugget of information, even if you’re not writing a battle-scarred hero, as I am.

In reading it, I’ve been alternately horrified and impressed at how the British Army used dress to control its soldiers.

As Janet pointed out yesterday, many British soldiers were boys or men who had no choice (“Prison/deportation or the Army?” is just as obvious as Eddie Izzard‘s “Cake or death?”) or were coerced to join.

To keep their soldiers–some of whom were blackguards, to say the least–in line, their superior officers demanded perfection in appearance. Keeping the men busy cleaning their kits kept them away from alcohol, which was one of the Army’s biggest problems (Sharpe mentions this frequently, always trying to destroy whatever alcohol is within his men’s vicinity). Myerly says, “The ideal of perfection was central to the art of nineteenth-century military management, especially in connection with martial display.”

Myerly then goes on to say that “Officers were sometimes obsessed with presenting a correct and pleasing appearance, which often resulted in the total neglect of other significant considerations, even if these were vital to the army’s success.”

Wow. To prove the point, Myerly discusses the headgear required, sometimes two feet high, made of material that was ridiculously hot in the summer, got drenched in the rain, and blew off whenever there was a strong wind.

On one dress occasion in 1829, Wellington, in full military regalia, was blown off his horse by a gust of wind. In 1842, Queen Victoria demanded that a 73 year-old Wellington wear all the proper military gear, which made him trip and fall.

The stocks soldiers wore around the neck had to fit tightly, and were sometimes made too tight so as to make the blood go into the soldier’s face and make him look hale and hearty, even if he hadn’t been eating properly.


Soldiers had to wear uniforms sometimes designed by people who had no idea what a battlefield was like (King George IV, I’m looking at you). The uniforms were impractical, binding, difficult to maintain and expensive. But they looked good, and that was all that mattered.

As Billy Crystal‘s Fernando Lamas character says, “It is better to look good than to feel good.”

It’s clear, from history, that this kind of restrictive insistence on proper attire worked to keep the Army intact and submissive. Of course it chafes at our notions of freedoms as well.

How about you? Have you ever had to wear a uniform? Follow a dress code? Did it make you feel more official? Did you hate it? Did you like not having to worry about choosing what to wear?

Megan

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Waterloo on film

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Hi, it’s me again, hoping I did as good a job being Cara yesterday as Cara did being Diane. 🙂 Today, the actual anniversary of the battle, I’m going to talk about documentaries and films of Waterloo you might want to watch for research and/or to commemorate the event.

Like many of you, I like visuals. When reading about battles, I find myself frequently flipping to the maps as I try to visualize who attacked from which direction, etc… So I got onto Netflix and ordered the documentary 1815: THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. At only about an hour long, it is limited in its coverage but it does provide basic descriptions of the roles of infantry, cavalry and artillery, some football-play-style depictions of the movements of armies with arrows and such, and footage from the 1970 epic film below to provide some pretty realistic scenes of cavalry charges, etc… If you want to understand the battle but have trouble picturing what is happening just from text, this is a good starting place.

Next I watched the 1970 epic, WATERLOO, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, with Rod Steiger playing Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as Wellington. It was a box office flop; I suspect that it was not enough of a documentary for military history buffs and not enough of a drama for general audiences. Being as I enjoy a mix of both, I thought it quite good. The main characters were well-cast (yes, Christopher Plummer did bring up memories of Captain von Trapp but the Captain and the Duke do have a lot in common). I am not enough of an expert to comment on the accuracy of the battle scenes, but the scale was convincing. 20,000 men from a Russian army division were used to portray the massed armies. Cavalry and artillery were both depicted on a grand scale. Aerial shots are helpful to anyone who might have difficulty picturing infantry squares. Overall, I recommend it.

(One warning. The version I rented was produced in China and the subtitles were written by someone with little knowledge of English and less of the battle. “Quatre Bras” becomes “Catilba”, “Picton” becomes “Prekton” and in one memorable line of dialogue, Bonaparte says that Wellington has “bred to death.” And you can’t even turn the subtitles off. If you rent this version, I recommend sticking something across the bottom of the screen so you won’t be distracted by the sheer awfulness.)

As for SHARPE’S WATERLOO, well, I love Richard Sharpe and I love Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe, but this film is painfully unconvincing as a depiction of Waterloo. Throughout the series, battle scenes suffered from being low budget and this one is worse than the others. Although much of the action is centered around the defense of the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, which can be depicted with a more modest cast, there are still many scenes that suffer from a sheer inadequacy of scale. If you enjoy the series and its characters, by all means catch this film. Just don’t expect it to give you a real flavor of the battle.

Have any of you seen these movies and if so, what did you think? If you’ve seen other films or documentaries of Waterloo, please share!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

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Great Heroes Aren’t Always Nice

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Oh, geez. Friday already?

Last week, I talked about great book beginnings. I’ve since changed mine to this:

“If you don’t get your stinkin’ farmer’s hands off me, I will rip your head off and feed it to your pigs.”

Spoken by the hero, of course, a sharp(e)-tempered man bent on revenge. I’ve now got three chapters under my belt, and I have to write the synopsis. Ugh.

To inspire my writing, I’ve started reading Sharpe’s Havoc, a Richard Sharpe book by Bernard Cornwell set in Portugal in 1809 (Elena posted about Sharpe in India, too, if you wanna read more about him).

I don’t know if any author as skilfully embeds history within exciting action; sure, Cornwell takes liberties with some aspects of the Napoleonic Wars, but in general he gives you the feeling of what it must have been like to be there. Awesome, awesome writing and a super-compelling hero (Cornwell’s site, www.bernardcornwell.net, is great for more insight into his most famous character. I would say ‘memorable,’ but I also really liked Thomas of Hookton in the Grail Chronicles).

And inbetween all this “research” (did I mention I got some of the Sharpe miniseries from the library? Yeah, pure research, baby), I’ve been watching ladies win on Top Chef and Celtics win in Los Angeles. Plus getting back to the gym for the first time in 2 1/2 months.

Which is why I am late, and aghast it is Friday.

So I have very little to offer here, except that it is finally cooling off some, I cannot wait to see the Incredible Hulk, freaking out that my son gets out of school for the summer in a week and a half, that National is next month (!), and that I am finally writing fresh stuff again.

In other words, life is good, and I am dull. So let’s talk about you, instead.

What are you doing this summer?

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Sharpe in India

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I have a confession to make. With the Sharpe series, I broke my own rule about reading the book before seeing the film adaptation. I started out by reading SHARPE’S RIFLES, saw the film and then just continued watching the series. Just couldn’t help myself, I guess! 🙂

Now I’m making reparation by reading all the books, starting with the earliest. I just finished the first three which are set in India: SHARPE’S TIGER, SHARPE’S TRIUMPH and SHARPE’S FORTRESS. I just loved these books. I find the military history fascinating and Cornwell does a brilliant job recreating scenes I’d read about in WELLINGTON IN INDIA by Jac Weller. But most of all I love the character development. Sharpe starts out as an ex-thief, pretty much a knuckle-dragging, musket-toting goon with few aspirations and even fewer morals. But you also see his potential. These books show the early stages of transformation from the sort of soldier Wellington called the scum of the earth into a hero. I also enjoyed the depictions of Wellington (which felt very real to me) and the fictional character of Colonel McCandless, a mentor in Sharpe’s “hero’s journey”, a grown-up version of Jiminy Cricket helping to keep Sharpe on the path of honor.

I also watched SHARPE’S CHALLENGE, the film in which Sharpe returns to India several years after Waterloo on a mission to find his missing buddy Sergeant Harper. Elements of the three India books were recast to fit the new time frame. For that very reason, I found the film disappointing. I missed the early character development and also didn’t appreciate that they killed off Lucille to allow Sharpe this last adventure. The romantic elements were scanty, after all. I don’t know why Sharpe could not have completed his mission and returned to Lucille. But that’s why I’m a romance writer, I guess!

Pluses of the film: evocative views of India, another chance to see Sharpe and Harper in action and a truly horrible villain played by Toby Stephens.

Has anyone read these books or seen the film? What did you think?

And if all this talk of India and Sharpe make you feel hot for any reason, do go ahead and refresh yourselves with a visit to Candice Hern’s new collection of Regency era fans. They are very lovely!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

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