That intelligence began at the Spanish frontier, at Irun, where a cobbler sat in the doorway of his shop and counted the French battalions coming in and the survivors going out.

ECONOMIST: Napoleon and Wellington

Mr Urban expands his hero's achievements with some first-class descriptions of the campaign and its battles, but he might have done better to have remembered that patient cobbler in Irun and written a book describing the whole intelligence apparatus available to Wellington.

ECONOMIST: Napoleon and Wellington