AUTHOR’S NOTE

‘Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer,’ wrote William Cecil, Lord Burghley. At the end of every war, a grateful British nation has dismissed its surplus soldiers, and usually with indifference. One has only to look back not ten years, to the end of the Cold War, to see how ill-used a soldier can be when his arms are no longer required. Invariably, too, the calculation proves wrong and a shortage of soldiers soon follows – as was the case with the 1992 reductions.

After Waterloo there was a wholesale disbanding of regiments. Unlike 1992, however, when the cavalry – or, more properly, the Royal Armoured Corps – was all but eviscerated, the Duke of Wellington’s horsed regiments escaped the worst for a time because they were needed to deal with civil disturbances at home, there being no proper police force. On the whole they found it disagreeable work, as soldiers still do. One of the reasons was that their legal position was often ambiguous. I commend two books on this fascinating subject to those who would read more. First is Military Intervention in Democratic Societies (Croom Helm, 1985), a scholarly collection of essays edited by Peter Rowe and Christopher Whelan. Second is Military Intervention in Britain, from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident (Routledge, 1990). Its author, Anthony Babington, is a retired circuit judge with wartime military service, and it is a most authoritative and lively account of the soldier’s tribulations in aid of the civil power.

I am indebted to the staff of the Prince Consort’s Library at Aldershot, who have been most generous in searching out books and material. Again I owe many thanks to the two retired officers who keep the Small Arms Collection at the School of Infantry in Warminster, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Tug’ Wilson and Major John Oldfield. I gratefully acknowledge, as before, my wife’s equestrian advice, and now my younger daughter’s help with the early manuscript. Fortune continues to smile on me with editors, too, for after Ursula Mackenzie’s leaving Transworld for greater things, my publishers took on strength Selina Walker, a woman of such apt cavalry credentials that the departure of Ursula (who taught me a great deal) was in the end bearable. And Simon Thorogood persists in his patient, painstaking way to serve the manuscripts and me admirably.

While I was writing this book, the man who gave my military life the greatest turn, and without whom Matthew Hervey would therefore never have been, died prematurely. I dedicate A Regimental Affair to him, with thankfulness and fond memories.