Waterloo — Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell reconstructs the battle of Waterloo hour by hour, drawing on the accounts of participants on all three sides — British, French, and Prussian — to give a sense of the chaos, contingency, and violence of the engagement that ended Napoleon's career. The book is written with the narrative skill of a novelist who has spent decades writing historical fiction about the period, and it recovers the experience of battle — the noise, the smoke, the panic, the heroism, the mechanical slaughter — rather than simply its outcome. A book about what it was actually like.

'Bernard Cornwell is at the height of his powers in this magnificent account of Waterloo. You are there, in the smoke and mud and noise.' — The Times. 'The best popular account of the battle ever written.' — Literary Review