This best seller by the Clayesmore School's preeminent author Julian Rathbone(1935-2008) was published in 1997 and was picked out in Saturday's(15/2/25) Times as worth a reread. Journalist Robbie Millen wrote "Although he was twice short listed for the Booker Prize he has slowly disappeared down the literary memory hole. Which is a shame because The Last English King his bestseller is terrific." Rathbone told that a pivotal scene in this Saxon saga was inspired by bonfires on Hambledon to celebrate the Queen's Coronation in 1953. Rathbone whose father was cut off from the famous family because he lived with a woman he couldnt marry went from Clayesmore (48-53), where he was a scholarship boy, to Magdalene College Cambridge where he was a contemporary of Bamber Gascoine and Sylvia Plath. He remained loyal to the school speaking at the OC Dinner in 2002 and lunched throughout the seventies with English master John Appelby . It was Appelby who turned the young Rathbone onto Wellington,three of his thirty nine books concerned the Peninsular War. For those unfamiliar with Rathbone's work the anthology "The Indispensable Julian Rathbone" is available on Amazon.