A Close Run Things: Introducing Matthew Hervey of the Light Dragoons

This is not just a story of an officer in the Duke of Wellington's army: it is the story of a regiment - that peculiarly British institution which John Keegan, the most percipient historian and observer of all things military, has described as "an accidental act of genius". Every regiment was - still is - different, and revelled in that difference. The difference was not just in the people but in the regiment's history and traditions - the received notions of how things should be done, the "esprit", the spirit.