Philip Haythornthwaite is a native of Lancashire, where he still lives. Among his business activities, he was involved for many years in bookselling, which provided an insight into the subject which not all authors are fortunate enough to have experienced. He is the author of many books, mainly covering 18th- and 19th-century military history, but including The Armies of Wellington (1994), The Napoleonic Source Book (1990), The World War One Source Book (1992) and The Colonial Wars Source Book (1995). Among his more recent major publications have been Who Was Who in the Napoleonic Wars, and Waterloo Men - the latter a study of the first-hand experiences of combat during the Waterloo campaign. The perspective of the ordinary soldier and his experiences has always been a primary interest, not least in bringing the subject as vividly to life as do the illustrations of Hamilton Smith in Wellington’s Army. First-hand accounts and soldiers' testimonies were used, for example, in his recent Napoleonic Weapons and Warfare: Cavalry and Infantry publications (2001), which sought to discover examples of what actually happened in Napoleonic battles, rather than what was supposed to happen according to the drill manuals. He has provided the introductions to In the Peninsula with a French Hussar, and Life in Napoleon's Army: The Memoirs of Elzear Blaze, both titles in Greenhill's Napoleonic Library, and has contributed to two other major works in the Greenhill list, Vol. IX of History of the Peninsular War, and to The Napoleon Options. He has also acted as historical consultant to a number of commercial companies. His published work ranges from the English Civil War to the Great War. His interest in the Napoleonic period, stimulated by the fact that a distant relative served under the Great Duke in the Peninsula and in the 1815 campaign has led him to research many of the lesser-known aspects and personalities of the Napoleonic Wars. Philip Haythorthwaite has a research library of thousands of books, and documentation contained in a run of A4 loose-leaf binders and book files in which are contained various printed articles, photographs, photocopies etc. on various military topics: he has long since ceased to count them, but there are possibly between 150 and 200 of these. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 116 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com