An Astonishing Infantryman

An 18+ talk at the National Army Museum on the extraordinary true story of Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hill.

This adults-only talk at the National Army Museum tells the story of Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hill of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a real-life soldier whose career has been compared to Bernard Cornwell's fictional hero Richard Sharpe. Speaker Steve McCarthy draws on a recently published archive of Hill's letters home to trace his rise from a Dartmoor village boy who joined up at 18 to a battle-hardened officer who fought on three continents, marched with Wellington through the Peninsular War and was seriously wounded at Waterloo. The talk runs for an hour and covers Hill's role in seven major campaigns and around 40 individual actions, including Albuera, Salamanca and Vitoria, along with his service in the Portuguese army and the shipwreck and other misfortunes he survived along the way. It's free to attend but booking is required, and it's for adults only.

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