Uthred 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 MoreRobert Radcliffe returns with the second part of his Airborne Trilogy, Freefall. Theo Trickey’s war takes his to North Africa and some of C Company, The Parachute Regiment’s fiercest battles. In Germany, Daniel Garland is experiencing the reality of total war on the civilian population and piecing more of Trickey’s life back together and his connections to the late Erwin Rommel. As Arnhem looms, the battle to get there will be just as brutal as what is to come.
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 MoreI have loved Robert Radcliffe's previous five novels, to the point I even read one of them as an eBook. Radcliffe’s new tale is his most ambitious yet. Airborne is the first of trilogy of novels telling the tale of a boy caught between countries, in search of a father and who finds two; John Frost, godfather of the Parachute Regiment and Erwin Rommel, The Desert Fox.
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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