Redcoat

"Yes, Richard Holmes is among my great heroes. He wrote a superb book about Wellington himself. But this is something different. You are right, it is the story of the conditions that the men lived in. You hear about their camps, their pay, their food, what kind of guys they were and how they fought. It is no dull dossier but a very engaging account of the life of soldiers in Britain’s red-coated army two or three centuries ago. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter My favourite passage in a book that is brimming with vivid accounts of the conditions the men had to endure is the opening passage of the whole book. It is the best description I have read of what it was like to stand in the thin red line facing an enemy approaching – and of the terrifying nature of the kind of close combat that followed."