A collection of memoirs about the Peninsular War, the Battle of Waterloo, and society and personalities of Regency London and 19th century Paris, by a sometime Grenadier Guards officer, unsuccessful parliamentarian, and dandy. Gronow displays social attitudes of the day which would now be regarded as unacceptable, but is a clever raconteur who brings to life both the horrors of war and the gaiety of high society.The spelling in this book is rather creative (including the occasional spelling of "ankle" as "ancle"), and the punctuation is remarkably varied. I have tried to preserve both, except that the spaces between a word and the following colon or semicolon have been removed. There are also many French words and phrases, whose meaning will usually be obvious as soon as you realise they are French. Of course I apologize for any genuine errors in spelling and punctuation that have crept into this file.