Is this the end?

Well, that was fun. A number of people have asked if they can buy the series on audio. The answer is: Yes, very soon. We’ll announce details here and also on twitter, where we’re @roberthudson and @mpphillips. I dare say @copenhagenhorse and @marengohorse will mention it too.

Lots of other people have asked if we’ll ever find out what happens next. To this we say, that the original version of the final play-out read:

And there the letters end. It is rumoured that there are other packets in the private collection of a Danish chewing gum magnate, secreted into the velvet backing behind the fish knives of the Officers’ Second Best Dining Service of the Coldstream Guards and in various other places, but until new funding is secured from the Comedy Commissioning Department at Radio 4, who are practically the only people still financing original historical research, it is impossible to take this further. Maybe that funding will eventually emerge. Here’s hoping. 

Here’s hoping indeed. And while we are on the subject of the authors’ cut, well, for good and sensible reasons we recorded more than we could use. Some of our favourite lines had to go. Below, for instance, is a passage from Copenhagen. If you buy the book, you get approximately 20% extra content on the letters alone, and you get a whole load of new letters. From C to his mum, for instance, and from M to a horse called Flambeau. And there’s more than just letters. You really should buy the book, and you should do it now, because it only gets published when enough people have signed up.

It is all go in Paris. Wellington has been made ambassador to France, which seems tactless. For his embassy, he has bought a massive hotel, which in this period means house rather than hotel. Everyone is falling over themselves to give the general presents. The king gave him two vases – big mistake, Wellington hates vases – and a tray which was originally painted for Napoleon’s mother and which features Napoleon and his Mameluke servant hunting in funny hats. Why they thought Wellington would want a tray in general or this one in particular I do not know. Also, what is a mameluke? It sounds like a sort of cat, but that cannot be the case.