'Redcoat is a wonderful book, doing justice to men who have long deserved a chronicler of Richard Holmes' skill. It is not just a work of history - but of enthusiasm and unparalleled knowledge.' BERNARD CORNWELL

Redcoat combines a first-class military historian famous as a TV personality with a Schama-esque approach to one of the most enduring and magnetic subjects of British history. It has all the makings of a big autumn best-seller.

Richard Holmes is famous as TV's military historian, the writer and presenter of War Walks and author of Firing Line and Riding the Retreat. Red Coat marks his return to serious writing.

Drawing on a wealth of original source material - diaries, letters, memoirs - Red Coat is an anecdotal history of the British soldier from 1700 to 1900, a period in which methods of warfare and the social makeup of the British army changed little, and in which the Empire was forged.

Similar in style to Katie Hickman's Daughters of Britannia, or Simon Schama's Citizens, Red Coat gives a rich and wonderful portrait of the men who donned the red uniform, charged in the Light Brigade, dug in at Rourke's Drift, fought Napoleon at Waterloo, Washington in America, were stabbed by Afghans, annihilated by Zulus and turned the atlas pink.