The expression 'close run thing' derives supposedly from Wellington's remarks after the very late victory at Waterloo. The expression is widely used – even in the title a book (Allan Mallinson, 1999). What the generalissimo actually said was 'it has been a damned nice thing', as related by Thomas Creevey (1768-1838), a Whig MP, who incidentally also noted down Wellington's other famous remark, that, if he had 'enough of that article', gesturing towards a British soldier, he would overcome Napoleon. (Thomas Creevy, The Creevey Papers, ed. John Gore, 1938, p.136)
Sir Arthur Bryant records the moment in his book The Great Duke: 'So many of his [Wellington's] staff and general officers had been killed or wounded that, with their places to fill and urgent orders to be given for the pursuit of the French, at 5 a.m. the Duke, with his dispatch unfinished, mounted his horse and rode to Brussels. Here all the bells were ringing and the reprieved people shouting in the streets. Sitting at the open window of his hotel room, Wellington resumed his task. There was a crowd outside, including Thomas Creevey, who recorded for posterity what happened. 'Upon recognising me, be immediately beckoned to me with his finger to come up. . . . The first thing I did was to put my hand out and congratulate him upon his victory. He made a variety of observations in his short, natural, blunt way, but with the greatest gravity all the time, and without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy. “It has been a damned serious business,” he said, “Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. Blucher lost 14,000 on Friday night, and got so damnably licked I could not find him on Saturday morning; so I was obliged to fall back to keep up communications with him.” Then, as he walked about, he praised greatly those Guards who kept the farm (meaning Hougoumont) against the repeated attacks of the French; and then he praised all our troops, uttering repeated expressions of astonishment at our men's courage. He repeated so often it's being “so nice a thing – so nearly run a thing”, that I asked him if the French had fought better than he had ever seen them do before. “No,” he said, they have always fought the same since I first saw them at Vimiero.” Then he said, “By God! I don't think it would have done if I had not been there.”' Sir Arthur Bryant, The Great Duke; or, The invincible general, London: Collins, 1971, p. 453, after Creevey, The Creevey Papers, ed. cit., I, 23-67.
Source: NicholasDunne-Lynch, independent scholar