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
Gerard Koeppel Gerard Koeppel Gerard Koeppel is an American author and historian, with a focus on New York infrastructure. He has written three books—"Water for Gotham: A History" (Princeton University Press, 2000), "Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Nation" (Da Capo Press, 2009); and "City on a Grid: How New York Became New York" (Da Capo Press, 2015)—and contributed to numerous other books, including The Encyclopedia of New York City, of which he was an associate editor of the second edition. "City on a Grid" was a winner of a 2015 New York City Book Award and was