Waterloo: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ian Fletcher of Ian Fletcher Battlefield Tours, who in 2000 conducted me around no fewer than sixteen Peninsular War and Waterloo Campaign battlefields, including several of Wellington’s masterpieces, and who has always been tremendously supportive of my Napoleonic Wars endeavours. Peter Hofschröer has introduced me to the revisionist accounts of Waterloo, and to the importance of the Siborne model, which can be seen in the National Army Museum, from where Andrew Uffindell and Julian Farrance have also been most supportive.

I should also like to thank Peter Chambers of Bangor, County Down, for his generosity in giving me Sir William Fraser’s book The Waterloo Ball.

Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, with whom I take annual threeday tours to sites of Napoleonic and Wellingtonian interest in London, France and Waterloo, has introduced me to many of the aspects of the battle that one can perhaps only fully appreciate by walking the ground itself. John, president of the Guild of Battlefield Guides, used to live near the battlefield and has conducted ninety tours of it, so I could not have been in better hands. He also very generously read my manuscript for me, as did John Morewood, editor of the excellent Waterloo Journal, the magazine of the Association of Friends of the Waterloo Committee, an organisation that all enthusiasts should join. I would like to thank both Johns most warmly.

This book is dedicated to Robin Birley, in grateful recognition of sixteen years of friendship and generosity.

ANDREW ROBERTS

www.andrew-roberts.net

October 2004