All posts tagged: Bernard Cornwell

The Archer’s Tale – By Bernard Cornwell

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The set of books I have decided to look at this week is Bernard Conwell’s Grail Quest novels, which starts with The Archer’s Tale.  For these novels, Cornwell has chosen a fascinating period of history: The One Hundred Year’s War that raged through the fourteenth and early fifteenth century between England and France.  What is unusual about these novels is they follow the story of a young archer on the English side.  Why is this unusual?  Well, normally in any form of novel, be it historical, fantasy, or Sci-Fi we expect to follow the story of someone fighting to protect their homeland, livelihood, or some other righteous cause.  But by following the English, who were undoubtedly the aggressor during this long conflict in France, he has departed from this usual convention.  At the start of the novel we meet our hero – Thomas of Hookton – as the English coast is attacked by French raids.  I’m not sure whether Cornwell was trying to suggest that these raids may have led to the century of warfare …

The Coming! Guest Post by Alan R Lancaster

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I wrote a piece a couple of weeks back regarding the novels of  Bernard Cornwell’s: ‘The Last Kingdom’ and the TV series of the same name which has just come out on the BBC.  This brought me to the attention of Alan Lancaster, who loves this period of history and writes extensively on the subject.  Much as he liked the series, he pointed out some issues where the series differs from the real story behind one of the great migrations into the British Isles.  I thought it only fair that I give him a chance to set the record straight so I asked him to write a post on Anglo-Saxon Britain and the coming of the Vikings.  Alan Lancaster is real authority on the subject and writes his own historic novels on the subject, you’ll find links to some of his writing at the end of the article. Okay, so over to Alan! Thomas Brooke study.abingdon.org THE COMING                         A Brief Story of Aengla Land The Romans had left Britain around seven years before a council of Celtic tribal …

Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom. Can the television series match up to the books?

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As the BBC are about to be showing the new televised series of these novels in the UK, I thought it would be a good time to discuss these books.  For those of you who live outside of the UK, I have no idea whether you’ll be able to watch it or not, but in this day of cable TV and the internet, I’m sure it won’t be hard to find somewhere.  What is clear, is that the television series has a lot to live up to regardless. Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon tales, also known as The Last Kingdom series, begins with the novel of the same name.  It covers the breathtakingly exciting period of history of the ninth century when the Vikings were a scourge on England’s shores.  The English Saxon Kingdoms began to fall to the Danish invaders, one by one, and the large kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Kent are all soon overwhelmed.  But just as all seems lost, one last kingdom stands strong, the Kingdom of Wessex, ruled by the now legendary …

Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King. A great combination of myth and history.

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Bernard Cornwell has always been a great favourite of mine, managing to combine exciting action with historical events – informing the reader, whilst keeping them on the edge of their seat.  So I was intrigued when he decided to write a series of novels based on the legend of King Arthur.  The Winter King is the first of the Warlord chronicles and is set in ancient Britain just after the Romans left its shores and the Saxons started to make incursions into the British Isles.  King Arthur comes to hold back the impending storm, and by so doing spawns the legend that has inspired the myth that has lasted through the millennia. The difficulty with any Arthurian novel is striking the balance between historical accuracy and the myth that has grown over the past fifteen hundred years.  Most people realise that Sir Thomas Mallory’s concept of knights in shining armour is completely inaccurate, but do you throw out all the elements of the legend you think untrue or exaggerated?  If so you may come up …

10 Types of Magic

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What is it that separates fantasy novels from other genres? Most fantasy novels are set on mythical worlds straight from the author’s imagination, some inhabited by outlandish beasts, or strange and mysterious semi-human dwellers. But what really defines and holds these worlds together is the existence of magic.

Bernard Cornwell – The Sharpe series (any of them)

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Most of you will be familiar with these stories, from the T.V. series that leapt Shaun Bean to stardom in the UK, and ultimately led to him becoming noticed by Hollywood.  The Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones will now be what most will associate him with, but for me he’ll always be Richard Sharpe.  After the pilot series of Sharpe’s Rifles (two episodes back in 1993) I was intrigued by the story, and when I found an old battered copy of one of his novels in my grandmother’s bookshelf (My grandfather, before his death, had a great interest in Waterloo) I was led into a fantastic ride through the Napoleonic wars, as Sharpe led his rag-tag company of riflemen through the peninsular of Spain.  It proved a long held theory of mine, that the historical novel will always be superior to the film or TV series as the writer has so much more scope to explain the historical details so important in this genre.  Before long I was an expert on the …