Book 2 (1848-1857): Love and Other Blood Sports

Book 2 of The Speedicut Papers continues the first-hand account of the life and times of Jasper Speedicut and his involvement in many long-forgotten wars from the First Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848 to the Anglo-Persian War of 1857.

Along the way, he has uncomfortable encounters with a well-known Hungarian count in Berlin and La Dame aux Camellias in Paris, travels to the United States where he is hunted by Pinkerton agents, nearly wrecks the Great Exhibition, contrives that Lord Cardigan catches the pox, is captured by the Russians at the outset of the Crimean War and, on his release, spends time with the notorious Cockney Grande horizontale, Cora Pearl.

Book 2 ends on the eve of the Indian Mutiny.