To most students of the Peninsular War the name Robert Craufurd evokes images of a battle-hardened martinet, flogging his men across Portugal and Spain, driving them hard and generally taking a tough stance against anything and everything that did not meet with his own strict disciplinarian code.

But that is only a partial picture of this most complex character, and it is the other side of Craufurd’s personality that is revealed in this, the first full-length biography to be written in the last hundred years. Craufurd’s letters to his wife are published here for the first time, and they show that he was a far more interesting and varied man in his private life than he appeared to be on campaign.

Ian Fletcher follows Craufurd’s controversial career from India, Ireland and South America to the Iberian Peninsula where he achieved immortality as one of Wellington’s finest generals.