Reviewed in today's NY Times:
"For writers and readers of historical fiction the Napoleonic wars have been a godsend, inspiring not just the odd novel but battalions and flotillas of books..."
While "British soldiers are sacking and pillaging the Spanish town of Badajoz; Kitty Wellington, the duke’s wife, is trying to ignore her husband’s neglect and serial philandering...Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington, emerges here as a more complicated character than the dashing, sexually profligate hero we thought we knew: remote, ascetic, cynical, ungrateful, sensitive about his Irish birth, vain but alert to the snares of fame and flattery, and appalled by the human toll of the war he wages with such brilliant efficiency....Wellington reflects, 'Enthusiasm for reform, religion, the influence of meddling women; who knew what it was, but these days no man could appear in public dead drunk as Pitt had used to do or dangle courtesans on his arm like the wretched Fox.' And he concludes, “I may do what I please in private,' adding, 'but I must ring myself with a wall of propriety so high no one can see in.'"