Andrew Taylor

Fiction’s most famous Rifleman returns — and it’s miraculous he’s still alive

Sharpe’s Assassin sees our hero despatched to Paris in the aftermath of Waterloo to take on the crack battalion known as Napoleon’s ‘devils’

‘A Rifleman at Musketry Practice’ by John Augustus Atkinson. [Alamy] 
issue 09 October 2021
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  • Sharpe’s Assassin

    Bernard Cornwell

    Harper Collins, pp. 400, £20

It has been 15 years since the last Richard Sharpe novel, and it’s a pleasure to report that fiction’s most famous Rifleman is still thriving, miraculous as that may seem after his long and suicidally dangerous career. Sharpe, a foundling child from the East End of London, brings street fighting skills to the business of soldiering.

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