Letter Home From The Basque Country – by Stephen Drake-Jones
This is a most singular recording of the last year of the war in the north of Spain in 1813. Drake-Jones has carefully selected and edited letters & journals from Lord Wellington & twenty-two of his officers who witnessed and wrote home of the decisive Battle of Vitoria, the siege of San Sebastian and also their observations of the Basques themselves; their strange language, costumes, customs and the lush green country-side. They wrote reassuring family and friends that they had survived another battle.
There are very moving lines when one young officer, billeted with a local family, overhears the woman singing a lullaby in Basque to her baby girl. Another has to ride over to the next village to tell his sweetheart that he and his regiment are leaving the next day; a final farewell that broke his heart!
Includes profiles, period prints, maps and a chronology of the Peninsular War.