As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.
Historical person
1757–1829
Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet was a British army officer who fought extensively in India and later commanded expeditions elsewhere. Once held prisoner by Tipu Sultan, he took part in the capture of Seringapatam and later served in campaigns in Egypt, the Cape and Spain.
Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet also held the offices or ranks of Baird baronets, Member of the Privy Council of Ireland, and Governor of Inverness. Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet was born in East Lothian and died in Crieff.
Alexander Kent’s The Only Victor places Sir David Baird in the 1806 expedition to seize the Cape Colony, where the real Baird commanded the British land force while the fictional Richard Bolitho coordinates naval support. The novel therefore uses Baird as part of the joint command structure that turns an apparently peripheral operation into an important imperial conquest. Anthony Morland’s The Tiger’s Last Roar returns to Baird’s earlier Indian career during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War. Its fictional officer William Culpepper moves through the campaign that culminates at Seringapatam, where Baird—once a prisoner of Tipu Sultan—historically led the storming force that broke into the fortress.
Series
The Life of William Culpepper follows a fictional British officer from the Revolutionary Wars in Europe into the East India Company’s campaigns in India. The sequence begins with the Flanders campaign and the Battle of Boxtel, then moves through the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the unstable aftermath of Tipu…
All books in this series
The Richard Bolitho novels follow a Cornish Royal Navy officer from his years as a midshipman in 1772 through the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812. Richard rises from junior officer to admiral while the series examines command, discipline, loyalty…
All books in this series
