was about to be perpetrated." Within the Crimea, however, the majority "roundly damned" Nolan. The Charge was soon overshadowed by other scandalous and bloody military failures such as the continued failure of the siege of Sevastopol. Terry Brighton writes in Hell Riders that "in the 150 years since the charge historians have generally agreed that the blunder was indeed Nolan's. Most argue that he misunderstood the order, and when asked by Lord Lucan what Raglan intended by it pointed towards the wrong enemy guns and sent the Light Brigade to its destruction. In recent years it has even been suggested that he deliberately misled Lucan about which guns were to be attacked". Brighton himself distributes the blame more widely, holding that Raglan, Lucan and Nolan were at fault, but that the vast majority of the blame lies with Lucan. David Buttery, in Messenger of Death, agrees that the blame was at least partially Lucan's for failing to conduct adequate reconnaissance. Nolan was played by David Hemmings in the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade. In the film Nolan is portrayed as a haughty, glory-hungry officer, but also a "symbol of youth, energy and professionalism ... desperate ... to reform the army". A more sympathetic, though still impetuous, portrayal of Nolan was created by George MacDonald Fraser in his picaresque novel of 1973, Flashman At The Charge. A totally fictitious "Major Geoffrey Vickers", standing in for Nolan but with utterly different motives in ordering the charge, was played by Errol Flynn in the 1936 film, The Charge of the Light Brigade. References Bibliography External links Obituary: The Illustrated London News 1818 births 1854 deaths 15th The King's Hussars officers 19th-century Austrian military personnel British Army personnel of the Crimean War British military personnel killed in the Crimean War British military writers