Sharpe's Tiger

With this year being the anniversary of Waterloo, I thought it was probably about time I found out a little bit more about this period of history. I've been a huge fan of the Sharpe TV series for years, repeatedly watching them despite knowing the stories inside out... but for some odd reason I'd never read any of the books. Crazy I know!

Killing two birds with one stone, I've devised a cunning plan* that involves reading one of the Sharpe books, followed by a related history book that (if I can find one) covers the same battle or campaign. Originally I thought it might be good to try and paint something related to each book before moving onto the next one, but I suspect that one is just wish listing... we shall see.

So far I'm really enjoying Sharpe's Tiger, even if I am getting slightly odd flashes of the wrong story from recently watching Sharpe's Challenge. I am now intrigued to know how much of Challenge is actually related to real events or if it is 100% made up because Sean was getting a bit too old to plan a young Sharpe.

Anyway. The third siege of Seringapatam seems to be quite tricky to find much about, unless my google-fu is failing me, which is most likely as I'm not even sure what this period/series of wars would be called. Other than a fairly slim Wikipedia entry, pretty much everything comes back with entries on this Sharpe book, rather than on the real event. I did manage to find some information on the Macquarie University archives that is quite interesting as it contains the diary entries and letters from Lachlan Macquarie, an officer in the army present. It isn't overly detailed though, so if anyone has any other recommendations of websites, or accessible books on the Fourth Anglo-Mysore war and the siege I would be grateful. Even Amazon is failing me... what is the world coming to?

I'd also be interested in suggestions for manufacturers of nice ranges for this period. So far the ones I've found are:

Redoubt Enterprises - 28mm scale range covering the British and Indian forces. Sadly no photos on their website, just sketches. Some reviews I've seen do say Redoubt are on the large side of things though...




*Now wouldn't a Napoleonic Blackadder have been good fun?!