Hofschröer, Peter

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HOFSCHRÖER, Peter

PERSONAL: Born in London, England. Education: King's College, B.A. (with honors).

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Praeger, 88 Post Rd. West, Westport, CT 06881.

CAREER: Interactive Magic, Germany, managing director. Worked as a specialist military book dealer and in book publishing and international sales for HarperCollins.

AWARDS, HONORS: Napoleonic Society of America Literary Award, 1999, for 1815, the Waterloo Campaign; International Napoleonic Society fellow; Memorial Medal gold and silver awards, League of Bismarck.

WRITINGS:

Prussian Line Infantry, 1792-1815, Osprey Publishing (Oxford, England), 1984.

Prussian Cavalry of the Napoleonic Wars, Volume 1, Osprey Publishing (Oxford, England), 1985.

Prussian Cavalary of the Napoleonic Wars 2: 1807-15, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 1986.

Prussian Reserve Foreign and Militia Troops, 1806-15, Volume 1, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 1987.

Hanoverian Army of the Napoleonic Wars, Osprey Publishing (Oxford, England), 1989.

1815, the Waterloo Campaign: Wellington and HisGerman Allies and the Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 1998.

1815, the Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory from Waterloo to the Fall of Napoleon, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 1999.

Wellington's Smallest Victory: The Duke, the ModelMaker, and the Secret of Waterloo, Faber (London, England), 2004.

Leipzig, 1813: The Battle of the Nations, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2005.

Lutzen and Bautzen, 1813: The Turning Point, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2005.

Also author of Prussian Staff and Specialist Troops, 1791-1815. Contributor of numerous articles to magazines and journals, including War in History, Journal of the Society of Army Historical Research, Age of Napoleon, First Empire, and Osprey Military Journal.

SIDELIGHTS: Although he has worked extensively in the computer game industry, Peter Hofschröer is a recognized historian and linguist who is fluent in English, German, and French. He has written extensively about the Napoleonic Wars and the Prussian Army, and his two-volume series 1815, the Waterloo Campaign, received the 1999 Literary Award of the Napoleonic Society of America. In his 2004 book Wellington's Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model Maker, and the Secret of Waterloo, Hofschröer provides a detailed history of Captain William Siborne's efforts in the 1820s and 1830s to create a detailed model of the battlefield of Waterloo, where the duke of Wellington had achieved his famous victory over Emperor Napoleon of France. Hofschröer starts off by giving a description of the battle itself and the subsequent various panoramas and shows that London entrepreneurs staged themselves to profit from the historic English victory. He then explores Siborne's eight-year effort to recreate the battlefield scene and the difficulties he experienced along the way. For example, Siborne faced a lack of funding after Wellington's Tory government was replaced by Whigs. Hofschröer also recounts how the model helped establish the truth regarding the Prussian Army's movements before and during the battle, contradicting Wellington's own version of events in the process and leading to Siborne's fall from grace with the English establishment. John Spurling, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, found that the author's "detailed account of Siborne's stubborn campaign . . . to get his model made, is at times almost as tiresome for the reader as the reality must have been for Siborne and all those involved." In a review in Geographical, Nick Smith called Hofschröer's account a "fascinating, if slightly claustrophobic, little book." In a review in the Spectator, while Allan Mallinson thought that not all of the story's "painstaking detail" is necessary, the critic nevertheless dubbed the book "fascinating."