After 15 years of adventures, Bernard Cornwell finally allows Uhtred of Bebbanburg to hang up Serpent-Breath. Of course, before Uhtred can finally do that, he is dragged into one final confrontation that will see Alfred’s dream realised on the bloody field of Bebbanburg.
Read MoreUthred of Bebbanburg returns for his 12th adventure in Bernard Cornwell’s latest novel, Sword of Kings. Uthred is goaded into returning south to rescue a queen and make a King. Yet Uthred is not getting any younger and the return to London prompts our ageing hero to consider that his days in the shield wall may be coming to an end.
Read MoreThe Dark Ages in Britain are a fertile period to mine. The sources, few as they are, talk of kings and warlords, battles and death, and then arrive the men from the North. It is the period of Beowulf and Arthur, of a Britain living in the decay of the Roman withdrawal and the arrival of a new God to fight the old. Into this mix, Matthew Harffy has thrown a young warrior, Beobrand, into the turmoil of Northumbria to find his fame.
Read MoreUhtred of Bebbanburg is one of those characters that has survived a rocky road and not just in the situations that Bernard Cornwell, his creator, has thrown him into. Now on his 9th adventure, Uhtred has survived a variety of foes, former friends. I wrote a while ago, after the announcement of the BBC TV series of the first two Uhtred books, why I loved the series and what Bernard Cornwell's books have meant to me. Warriors of the Storm is brilliant fun. Bernard Cornwell knows how to tell a tale. The pieces for the recapture of Bebbanburg, Uhtred's stolen seat in Northumbria, are falling into place and the moment we have been waiting for is getting ever closer.
Read MoreTwo hundred years ago, the single most decicive battle of an age of war was fought. Three armies fought three battles over fours days that would shape Europe, and the world, for the next 100 years. The next time British and Prussian troops would meet in Belgium, they would not be saving Europe, but tearing it apart. The Battle of Waterloo is possibly the most famous battle in history. It has occupied a place in British popular culture, popular history and the British psyche that is rather odd, the British named train stations after it. It's odd to think that a train station is named after a few square miles of farmland, near hamlet in the rolling Belgian countryside where 200,000 men crammed onto a tiny battlefield and slaughtered each other.
Read MoreBack in July, The BBC and Downton Abbey producers announced that they would be adapting Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories/Warrior Chronicles. I was so delighted, I blogged about it here. Uhtred is one of Cornwell's characters that you can tell he loves, but that he has struggled with. A couple of the middle books lacked his usual abandon, but this was due to him fighting and beating cancer at the time. It does help that Cornwell claims direct linage with Uhtred of Bebbanberg, so that keeps the series going. The latest in the story is The Empty Throne.
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