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"Holmes is a distinguished historian of the British Army ...[In this book he writes] about both [East India] Company and British Army soldiers, and both the officers and the rankers. He seems to be on surer ground when it comes to the British Army and to the officers but still has much to tell us on the rankers, with his source material coming from a mixture of the ten page bibliography and memoirs and letters. He lists eighteen such sources in the National Army Museum and thirteen in the British Library (as well as published sources), and gives numerous extracts from them as he describes what life was like... As nearly every fact is footnoted with the citation, anyone who is interested can follow up clues in the bibliography. All in all, this 500 page book is excellent background reading for anyone with a soldier ancestor." The full review by Steve van Dulken is available on p. 46 of the FIBIS ''Journal'' 15 (Spring 2006)