Wellington's Peninsular War Generals and their Battles by T.A. Heathcote, Pen and Sword, 2010, hardback, 208 pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781848840614

This new addition to T.A. Heathcote's series of collected naval and military biographies will be welcomed by military historians and by those whose interest in the exploits of those involved in Wellington's most enduring and celebrated military campaign is more broadly based, mediated by such fictional heroes as Matthew Hervey or Richard Sharpe whose ‘lives and loves‘, the publisher's blurb explicitly proclaims, frequently mirror the heroic life stories of actual participants in the Wellington's peninsular war. Four of Heathcote's subjects included in an alphabetically arranged biographical section, were killed in action, seven became prisoners of war and twenty-six were wounded. The military career of one of them, General the Honourable Sir Edward Paget, for example, who suffered both serious injuries, losing his right arm at Douro and imprisonment as a prisoner of war from 1812-14 after his capture by French troopers, has previously been overshadowed by that of his distinguished elder brother Lord Henry Paget, 1^st Marquess of Anglesey, who ironically later lost his right leg serving as second in command to Wellington at Waterloo.

In addition an informative introduction explains the promotion system of the British army, based on seniority and aristocratic patronage. Heathcote, however, explodes the myth of Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy in the officer class, revealing that almost half of the officers were of Scottish descent, while two were Germans and another West Indian. A concluding section usefully summarises major engagements, expeditions and campaigns in which five or more of Wellington's Peninsular War generals fought together complementing the biographical approach with a more extended analysis of military strategy.