A fully illustrated and detailed account of the retreat to Corunna, one of the epic campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Late in 1808 Sir John Moore found himself virtually alone with his small British army deep inside Spain. The armies of his Spanish allies had been overwhelmed and he faced a victorious French force under the Emperor Napoleon. He had little option but to order a retreat to the port of Corunna. This became the most arduous of trials with armies traversing mountainous terrain over appalling roads in the depths of winter. Somehow Moore held his outnumbered, exhausted men together as they struggled to reach safety. Philip Haythornthwaite recounts how, finally, at Corunna, Moore's army turned to face its tormentors.

In the bitter winter of 1808, a small British force found itself outnumbered and outmanouevered by a French army led by none other than the emperor Napoleon. Faced with crushing defeat, the British, commanded by Sir John Moore, turned and began a legendary march through the snow and ice of northern Spain to freedom and escape. Napoleon, swearing that he would drive the British leopard into the sea, pursued and an epic was born.

Many people in Great Britain and the United States can recall elderly relatives who remembered long stretches of verse learned at school decades earlier, yet most of us were never required to recite in class. Heart Beats is the first book to examine how poetry recitation came to assume a central place in past curricular programs, and to investigate when and why the once-mandatory exercise declined. Telling the story of a lost pedagogical practice and its wide-ranging effects on two sides of the Atlantic, Catherine Robson explores how recitation altered the ordinary people who committed poems to heart, and changed the worlds in which they lived. Heart Beats begins by investigating recitation's progress within British and American public educational systems over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and weighs the factors that influenced which poems were most frequently assigned. Robson then scrutinizes the recitational fortunes of three short works that were once classroom classics: Felicia Hemans's "Casabianca," Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," and Charles Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna." To conclude, the book considers W. E. Henley's "Invictus" and Rudyard Kipling's "If--," asking why the idea of the memorized poem arouses such different responses in the United States and Great Britain today. Focusing on vital connections between poems, individuals, and their communities, Heart Beats is an important study of the history and power of memorized poetry.

A novel of the Revolutionary War.

Sir John Moore is perhaps the second most famous British soldier of the Napoleonic Wars after the Duke of Wellington, yet his remarkable career has been neglected in comparison to his celebrated contemporary. His death in battle at Corunna overshadows the wide range of his earlier campaigns and his achievements as an innovative soldier. Janet Macdonalds fluently written and insightful biography focuses on the development of his character as well as his career as a commander. From it emerges a many-sided portrait of a fascinating man and an outstanding soldier, a key figure in the history of the British army. Admired by his peers but distrusted by his political masters, Moore was a controversial figure. He is best known for saving the British army in Spain by leading the retreat to Corunna, but he is also credited with developing the training system that enabled Wellingtons army to beat the French in Spain and at Waterloo. Janet Macdonalds account will rekindle interest in a leading actor in the struggle against the French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies.

Basing his story on contemporary letters, diaries and reports and a comprehensive bibliography, John Mollo takes the reader into the heart of the Hussar Brigade in peace and war, depicting its many colourful characters with a sure hand and describing every facet of day-to-day life, in barracks and on the battlefield. This is a story based on the harsh realities of war in the early years of the nineteenth century. Written with great elegance, the touch of a natural story teller and the imprint of a true lover and student of military history, this is a book to treasure.