Brigadier Gerard and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady. Conan Doyle, in making his hero a vain, and often rather uncomprehending, Frenchman, was able to satirise both the stereotypical English view of the French and – by presenting them from Gerard's baffled point of view – English manners and attitudes. Gerard tells the stories from the point of view of an old man now living in retirement in Paris. We discover that he was born in Gascony in the early 1780s (he is 25 in "How the Brigadier Captured Saragossa"). In "How
Martin Short (author) Martin Short (author) Martin Short (born 1943) is British TV documentary producer and author. He is best known for his exposés on organized crime and on Freemasonry. After reading history at Cambridge University, Short worked from 1969 to 1984 on major current affairs programmes for the ITV companies Thames Television, Granada and London Weekend Television (on the Lebanon) and for Channel 4's Dispatches series (on the international arms trade). In 1998 he presented "Charlie Richardson and the British Mafia" for Longshot Productions and Channel 4. Short has also completed a television series based on his 1989 book "Inside the Brotherhood