Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, published shortly, will be the first major addition to the body of primary source material covering the battle to be made generally available for many years. Much of what is known as the Siborne papers has sat largely unheeded in the British Library since the 1840s, and it is only through the momentous effort and perseverance of Gareth Glover that they are now to be available to the public. Gareth explains his fascina-tion with the subject and how he came to compile this collection. “I have always had an interest in military history; one of the first books I bought myself as a teenager was Great Battles of History, which I would pore over avidly when not reading that week’s edition of the Victor comic! I was enthralled by the scenes of battle, the colourful even garish uniforms and the feats of derring-do described within. My early ambition to join the Royal Navy as an officer naturally led me towards Nelson as my hero and I began to read deeply into the Napoleonic period. Naval operations at this time often centred around supporting the Army and this caused me to rapidly cross that divide, where I soon discovered my other hero Wellington. In the twenty odd years since, I have read everything and anything I could lay my hands on (to the extreme exasperation of my wife!) regarding the Napoleonic Wars, to the point where I am the proud owner of a library totalling in excess of seven hundred books on the subject. This has led me to be particularly interested in the Waterloo campaign, one of the shortest in history, but with more controversy attached to it than perhaps any other. I have read a number of ‘revisionist’ histories of the Battle of Waterloo and although not averse to seeing traditional views questioned, I have a tendency to be inquisitive and ques-tioning when authoritative statements are made without proof to back them up. Much has also been said for and against the works of William and Herbert Siborne and great conspir-acy theories have emerged, but I was struck by the lack of clear evidence attached to these. There has also been a growing tendency in recent years to quote a great deal from primary sources which are little known or not easily accessible to the general reader. This in one way is commendable, bringing new information to the fore, but does have an inherent weakness, as it could allow the material to be adjusted, to support a particular theory, with few able to question the statements made. The knowledge that there were nearly four hundred unpublished letters contained within the Siborne papers, written by British and King’s German Legion officers regarding their memories of the campaign that intrigued me greatly. Here was a potential mass of new information which could help clear up some of the great controversies of the campaign. I obtained copies of these letters and soon realised that there was indeed a great deal of important information buried within these files and it became a personal goal to bring this treasure trove of new information into the forum to allow open and honest debate. I was therefore delighted when Greenhill Books became as interested in this project as I was, for despite the huge difficulties of obtaining translations of the gothic German script used by a number of the KGL officers and the hours and hours of transcribing accurately the execrable writing of other letters, I feel very proud of the final product and sincerely hope that it will be viewed as a major milestone on the road to the perfect history of the Waterloo campaign.” Letters from the Battle of Waterloo is 352 pages long and includes numerous maps and diagrams illustrating the memories of those who served at the battle. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 128 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com