Series Review

The Sharpe Series, By Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series tells the story of Richard Sharpe, a foundling who fled the workhouse to join his majesty’s Britannic army. Fighting under the command of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, Sharpe’s life of soldiering covers an exhaustive twenty-one novels, during which he fights in both the Indian and European theater. The first novel, Sharpe’s Eagle, was written in 1981 and the last one, Sharpe’s Fury, came out in 2007. The novel series also saw a popular television spin off starring Sean Bean. Bernard Cornwell has written a great many excellent novels, but his own and Sean Bean’s careers both took off thanks to Sharpe.     

Having joined the army at a tumultuous time for the British Empire, Sharpe had his work cut out for him. During the early nineteenth century, Europe was ravaged by war. Conscription allowed massive armies, on a scale that had not been seen before, to be raised and deployed on the battlefield. After the turmoil of the French Revolution, a young artillery officer from Corsica named Napoleon Bonaparte distinguished himself as a brilliant military leader, and crowned himself emperor of France. The British, ever fretful about the balance of power on the continent (see my review of Henry Kissinger’s World Order), aligned themselves with a series of coalitions in order to defeat the French. Dire socio-economic conditions forced a young Richard Sharpe to join the army, and geo-political ones necessitated that the French were to become his enemy.

As a young man Cornwell fell in love with an American woman and moved to the United States. He lacked a job to support himself but had grown up reading C.S Forester’s Hornblower novels, and had always wanted to be a writer. With Horatio Hornblower serving in the Royal Navy, Cornwell seized the opportunity to write a series of novels centered on a soldier fighting the Napoleonic Wars on dry land. With the stout work ethic that is expected of immigrants to the USA, Cornwell sat himself down at his kitchen table in New Jersey and started clicking away on his typewriter. After the successful publication of his first novel, Sharpe’s Eagle, which centers on the Battle of Talavera in 1809, Cornwell became a full time writer. Chronologically, it falls somewhere in the middle of the series, when Sharpe has already risen to rank of captain and established himself as a shrewd commander.

The bulk of the series finds our intrepid solder fighting for Wellesley’s peninsular army in Spain and Portugal, but later additions tells the story of a young private Sharpe fighting in India against a slew of local warlords, including the feared Tipoo Sultan of Mysore. Visitors to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London can gaze upon the Tipoo’s macabre toy featured in Sharpe’s Tiger, an intricate automaton in the shape of a metal tiger sinking its teeth into a luckless redcoat’s throat. Turning the handle causes one of the redcoat’s hands to flap uselessly while a faint sound resembling a tortured scream emanates from the exhibition's mechanical innards.

Having survived the Tipoo and his tiger, Sharpe takes part in the battle of Trafalgar before the series turn to Europe and the long and harsh Peninsular war. The dramatic climax is, obviously, Sharpe’s Waterloo, which I am very much looking forward to. A prospective reader would be well advised to start with Sharpe’s Tiger, since it is the chronological beginning of the story as well as being a thumping good read.

I have praised Cornwell’s writing before on this blog. His language is relatively straightforward and accessible, yet he manages to capture the smell of gunpowder and the sound of the drummer boys sounding the charge. The only way you could possibly get closer to nineteenth century warfare would be to take part in the annual re-enactment of the battle of Waterloo, but then you would have to travel to a muddy field in Belgium and subject yourself to dodgy catering. Being British, however, it is not surprising that he is ever so slightly partial, and most of the French marshals are portrayed as foppish braggadocios.

A recurring theme through the series is the unfairness of British society at the time, particularly its military. This was an age where commissions tended to be sold to the highest bidder, and were very seldom awarded on merit alone. As a no nonsense career soldier Sharpe frequently clashes with incompetent officers fresh from England, who know nothing of war, and whose immaculate uniforms are better suited to the officer’s mess than the front line.

Through a combination of plundered French cash, bravery and dogged perseverance, Sharpe nevertheless manages to slowly and painstakingly rise through the ranks and become an officer himself. This was something that was slightly frowned upon at the time, since people thought that men promoted from the ranks would turn to drink. Sharpe’s first command as an officer is a detachment of Riflemen, where he meets the Irishman Patrick Harper, who becomes his steadfast companion for the duration of the war and helps him capture the eagle standard in Sharpe’s Eagle.   

Bernard Cornwell is one of the great writers of historical fiction, who manages to cater to a wide audience. His Sharpe series would be the perfect read for lazy days on the beach during the upcoming summer holidays.

Book Review: The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time

By Maria Konnikova

During the height of the Korean War, a wreck full of gravely injured North Korean soldiers desperately hailed a passing Canadian navy vessel, the HMCS Cayuga. They had been wounded in an ambush, and the crew were in dire need of medical attention. The Cayuga had only one sawbones onboard, the intrepid Dr. Joseph Cyr, who rose to the occasion. Over the next forty-eight hours Cyr performed nineteen surgeries and helped save just as many lives. Aided by a medical field guide he had persuaded a fellow doctor back in Ontario to create “for the troops”, Cyr soon became a celebrity in the press. There was, however, one small niggle. Joseph Cyr was actually Ferdinand Waldo Demara from Massachusetts, a notorious impostor who didn´t know the first thing about medicine. Aided by his field guide he nonetheless managed to carry out the surgeries with some degree of success. So successful was he, in fact, that when he offered his biographer to deliver his wife´s child many years later, he almost managed to persuade him. The North Koreans had survived, after all, so what could possibly go wrong? Throughout his life Demara also masqueraded as a Texas prison warden, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, a civil engineer, a doctor of psychology, and much else besides. He was the consummate con artist, a man with supreme confidence who could fool anyone and got away with it, time and time again.

Robbers hold you at gunpoint and force you to turn over your valuables, burglars break into your home in order to steal your television and bank robbers smash open armored vaults to plunder the treasure trove within. Con artists, however, never resort to violence. In the pecking order of the underworld, they are the aristocrats of crime. They make you trust them, believe them, love them even. Then you willingly hand over your life´s saving as well as every single material possession that isn´t nailed down. When their act is blown you will either stand by them and defend them against all accusations, or you will be too ashamed to speak up, your reputation in tatters and your life ruined. That´s when they toss you aside and move on to the next mark. Maria Konnikova´s The Confidence Game tells you all you need to know about how these people operate and why one of the world´s oldest professions is unlikely to disappear   

If you think you are too smart, well educated, savvy and metropolitan to fall for a confidence trickster, think again. The Ivy league stockbroker from New York who gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to a fortune teller certainly never suspected she was being ripped off. Neither did the French aristocratic family who were persuaded by a charismatic impostor that they were the victims of a masonic plot, and over the curse of ten years made them part with millions of dollars as well as the family estate.

 How is it, then, that these people keep succeeding time and time again? For a harmonious society, Konnikova explains, it is essential that we trust one another. Con artists prey on that trust and tries to use it for their own nefarious ends. The first part of any successful con is knowing who will be the most susceptible mark, and no one is better at reading their fellow human beings than a confidence trickster.

Deceit and trickery thrives in times of uncertainty and upheaval. Wars, revolutions and famines attracts con artists like moths to a flame, and the same is true for people who are emotionally unstable, be it because of a breakup or a death in the family. Even someone who is educated and has both feet firmly planted on the ground can, under the right circumstances, fall for cons that they would otherwise laugh at. The true con artist knows this, and knows how to pick out susceptible individuals from the crowd.

After the con artist has picked out his mark, it is time to introduce himself (Most con artists are men, Konnikova writes), and make a good first impression. The grafter is acutely aware of both the discreet signals that the victim is unwittingly sending out, and how he himself is perceived. An error at this stage is not an option. Otherwise, the mark will never be convinced that you are in fact a wealthy German industrialist offering a once in a lifetime investment opportunity. Once the mark has been identified and contact has been made, the con artist must spin a convincing tale and lure his unsuspecting mark into doing what he wants them to do and believing what he wants them to believe. The most diligent con artists can spend a considerable amount of time building trust and convincing his mark.

Eventually, a breakdown will occur, when the mark is presented with evidence that the magical 

investment opportunity might not be all that it´s cranked up to be.  You might think that anyone who isn´t a complete imbecile would cut their losses and back away at this point, but that isn´t how human psychology works. Positive illusions serve as a defense mechanism when we are faced with threatening circumstances. If all that we have been led to believe is suddenly being questioned, human beings tend to double down and reaffirm their certainty that everything will turn out for the best. This sets the con up for its final phase, that Konnikova dubs “the send and the touch”. This is when the con finally comes to fruition, the send is when the mark is recommitted to the con artist’s tall tale, and the touch is the part when the mark gets robbed blind and (quite possibly) sees his or her life ruined.

While reading The Confidence Game, you frequently have to fight the urge to yell at the hapless victims to not give their life´s savings away to someone who´s an obvious charlatan, yet the flaws in human psychology that makes it all possible are explained in all their embarrassing depth. A lot of research went into writing the book, and Konnikova conducted dozens of interviews all over the world with con artists, victims and psychology professors. She skillfully weaves together tales of real life cons with an explanation of the science behind it that´s understandable to a layman. Like a magician´s tricks being laid bare, Konnikova lets the reader gain an insight into their fascinating world and hopefully helps us prevent being conned in the future. For that purpose alone, The Confidence Game is well worth reading.