Sergeant James Steven’s letters home give a startling contrast between the heat of battle and his questionable behaviour when off duty. In one drunken night away from the front line, Sgt Steven played a cruel prank on a local “ugly” woman whom he tricked into thinking he wanted to marry in order to have his way with her. A series of 20 letters written by Sgt Steven are now to be sold at Bonhams in London. He was killed after volunteering to man a Howitzer gun in the face of a marauding Indian enemy in the Battle of Delhi in 1857. Luke Batterham, of Bonhams, said: “These letters give us an insight to the day-to-day life in the army and some of the adventures that befell this soldier.”