A Close Run Thing is the story of the Napoleonic Wars. A young cornet in the 6th Light Dragoons, Matthew Hervey, a soldier and a gentleman, finds himself allotted a hero's role.

With the last shots of the Battle of Waterloo still resounding in Europe, the adventures of Matthew Hervey, newly appointed aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington, continue when he is sent on a secret mission to war-torn India.

Captain Hervey has returned from India to an England in turmoil. The clamour for parliamentary and economic reform is bringing the country close to revolution. In the 6th Light Dragoons there is a new commanding officer - wealthy, vain, arrogant and cruel.

1819 sees Hervey in Rome with his sister Elizabeth where a chance meeting with Percy Bysshe Shelley leads him to rethink his future. Soon he is en route for Hounslow via Whitehall where he purchases a new commission in the 6th Light Dragoons.

1824. The Sixth Light Dragoons are still stationed in India, and the talk in the officers' mess is of war. The Burmese are increasingly encroaching on Company land and skirmishes are becoming common on India's borders. Meanwhile across the country in Bhurtpore the succession to the Raj has been usurped.

1826: Napoleon Bonaparte is dead and there is peace in Europe. However, in Portugal there is the scent of civil war in the air. Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to lend support to the Portuguese regent. His place is secured with the help of Lady Katherine Greville.

From the English Civil War to today's War on Terror: in this sweeping account of nearly 500 years of military history, former soldier Allan Mallinson looks at how the Army's dramatic past has made it one of the most effective fighting forces in the world today.

It is the year 1827 & Captain Peto has just taken command of HMS Prince Rupert, the only three-decker line-of-battle ship in His Majesty's Fleet. He is the proud master of a wooden fortress whose formidable firepower is the equal & more of Bonaparte's grand battery at Waterloo. But his journey to the Aegean will not be all smooth sailing.

Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons is urgently summoned to the Cape Colony when he learns that the Zulu warrior King Shaka is about to wage war. Soon Hervey, his old friend Eyre Somervile and their escort of dragoons and mounted rifles are riding north.

The year is 1829 and Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey has been promised command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. Before he can take up his post, however, there is a six-month assignment as an observer with the Russian army, an undertaking at the personal request of the commander-in-chief which Hervey feels obliged to fulfil.