Introduction Summary

"Sharpe's Christmas" by Bernard Cornwell is a collection of two stories about Major Richard Sharpe that were written for the Christmas editions of a newspaper. In "Sharpe's Christmas", Sharpe must defend Irati against a brigade of French soldiers to the north and a French garrison fleeing Spain from the south. In "Sharpe's Ransom", Sharpe attempts to rescue his woman and their child from French hussars seeking gold that they insist Sharpe possesses. Both stories in "Sharpe's Christmas" are very entertaining and reveal a level to Cornwell's hero beyond his expertise as a soldier.

In the Introduction, Bernard Cornwell explains that the two stories in this collection were written to fill pages in the "Daily Mail" over two successive holiday seasons. Each story was to be 12,000 words long, but they are much longer now since he rewrote them without constraints. Though it seemed like...