Dear Mr. Cornwell, I am a librarian in Miami, Florida and I truly enjoy your books. My first experience was with 'The Archer's Tale' (as it is called here). It was lucky for me that the publisher decided to change the title for the U.S. because I might not have looked at anything titled Harlequin (nothing to do with the romances) but because I have a keen interest in the longbow and 14th century history, the U.S. title really attracted my attention. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a copy for my father to read while he was recuperating from open heart surgery. He liked it too but not as much as he enjoys the Sharpe books. He is an avid reader and has probably read all of them. In fact, he is always quoting different parts form the books and telling me how they are based on actual fact. Well, to the point of my query. As I mentioned above I have always been interested in the history of the Middle Ages and the Grail quest series are three of the greatest books I have ever read. I am in the process of writing a novel about Edward the Black Prince. I am not looking for ideas or critiques or anything like that. I am merely looking for any suggestions that you might give for researching that period. There is such a wealth of information out there that it is difficult to decide what to read. Your books all have so much history ingrained in them that it is clear you are very knowledgeable about the true history of what ever time period you are writing about. Can you suggest any way to go about gaining more knowledge of 14th century history without spending the rest of my life doing it? I have been working on writing this book on and off for about three years but the idea came to me many years ago when studying for a history exam in high school. I realize that you are very busy and I can see from your website that you get many questions about all of your books. I will understand if you are unable to answer my questions. I finished reading 'The Last Kingdom' a few months ago and am very anxiously awaiting 'The Pale Horseman'. Thank you for reading my comments. I wish you good health and a long life so that you may continue writing such beautiful works! Sincerely, Candy Granda
A hard one to answer! And I fear I'm not going to very useful. You need the obvious books (Richard Barber on the Black Prince, the Wars of Edward III, etc etc) but the most useful stuff usually comes from tangential sources. I probably read about thirty to forty books? And got bits from every one, and I got other scraps from books that weren't even about the 14th Century. I can't think of one book that is hugely useful to a novelist - because what you want are the little things that bring an era to life. The big things (battles, etc) are well covered in obvious sources, but there's far more joy in discovering the minutiae of existence. I wish I could give you a list, but in truth I can only say read everything and anything, and good luck.