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Historical person
1769–1852
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and statesman whose career included campaigns in India, command of the allied army in the Peninsular War and victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Known for careful logistics, defensive positioning and coalition management, he became one of Britain’s most celebrated commanders. He later served twice as prime minister and remained an influential conservative public figure until his death in 1852.
Wellington is prominent in Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, where his campaigns provide the structure for Richard Sharpe’s rise through the army. Georgette Heyer’s An Infamous Army recreates Brussels society and the Battle of Waterloo with Wellington as a major historical presence. Fiction often depicts his reserve, dry wit and professional discipline, although some novels simplify the political and multinational nature of the armies he commanded.
In non-fiction, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington is discussed in Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Eagle, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Honour, and Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Escape. Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Eagle approaches the subject through military command and battlefield decision-making, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and empire, conquest and resistance.
Historical context
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…
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The Sharpe series follows Richard Sharpe from service as a private soldier in India to command in the British Army during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The novels place him at the Siege of Seringapatam, Battle of Assaye, Siege of Gawilghur, Battle of Trafalgar, British attack on Copenhagen,…
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Napoleonic Horseman follows a cavalryman through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The series moves between French and British service, espionage, the Peninsular War, sieges and Waterloo, using mounted warfare to show how individual soldiers are pulled through the largest conflicts of the age.
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The Poldark novels follow Ross, Demelza and their family in Cornwall from the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and into the Regency aftermath. The series combines mining, gentry politics, coastal smuggling, marriage, family conflict and the pressure of war on…
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The East Indiaman Saga follows Bill “Smudger” Smith from London poverty into the world of the East India Company. The books move through company ships, soldiers, Indian campaigns and the Battle of Assaye, using the early nineteenth-century British presence in India as a setting for escape, military discipline…
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The Kingsbridge novels trace the development of a fictional English community across nearly nine centuries. Builders, merchants, clergy, landowners, labourers and reformers repeatedly contest who controls work, worship, law and education, while the town changes from an impoverished Anglo-Saxon settlement into a cathedral city and industrial centre. Chronologically,…
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The Matthew Hervey novels follow an English cavalry officer from the final campaign against Napoleon into the unsettled decades after Waterloo. Beginning as a young cornet in the 6th Light Dragoons, Hervey advances through command while trying to reconcile professional duty, personal honour, family obligations and the often…
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The Alastair–Audley novels form a loose multigenerational sequence linking Georgian family drama with the Regency and the Battle of Waterloo. These Old Shades introduces Justin Alastair and Léonie, while Devil’s Cub follows the next generation through their son, Dominic. Regency Buck shifts to Judith and Peregrine Taverner under…
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This collection brings together Georgette Heyer’s historical novels set outside her main Regency-romance sequence. The settings range from medieval England and France to the Norman Conquest, Elizabethan maritime conflict, the escape of Charles II and the Peninsular War. The list follows the ordering supplied by the Fantastic Fiction…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
