Hello Mr Cornwell,

I would just like to thank you for creating these amazing stories. Because of your Sharpe series, it has inspired me to study history and I have never regretted it. I have happily and joyfully read your Grail Quest Trilogy and 1356 as well as your King Arthur tales and Uhtred stories and I am very much looking forward to the release of ‘The Pagan Lord’.

So inspirational have your stories been to me that when studying my degree in History, my BA dissertation was a comprehensive study of the Medieval English Archer between 1328 and 1348 – essentially encapsulating the stories of Thomas of Hookton. When studying MA Military History, my MA dissertation was a comparative study between the army of Sir Arthur Wellesley at the Battle of Talavera and the army of Edward III at the Battle of Crecy to show the changes and continuities between the two periods. My inspiration for this was ‘Sharpe’s Eagle’ and ‘Harlequin’ and even though I was told by many of my lecturers that I was crazy for undertaking such a study, I still came out of it with a very respectable 2:1. My studies of these two periods have shown me how well researched your stories are and you should be commended for the amount of work you put into each one. Because of the success of my BA and MA, the University of Hull has offered me a PhD placement to write a thesis on the social change of the English Archer between 1314 and 1415 provided I can get funding for it (which doesn’t seem likely). Again, I can only thank you for your inspirational stories that have allowed me to achieve what I have achieved.

Apologies of this is turning into a gushing fan email but I am grateful to you for your stories. There is an academic query involved in all of this: while reading Robert Hardy’s ‘Longbow’, I noted that at the front of the book, you wrote a piece where you said that both Wellington and Benjamin Franklin wanted to create units of Longbowmen to fight in the Napoleonic Wars and the American War of Independence. I have used these two facts to much enthusiasm in my BA and MA dissertations but I have been wondering, what were the original sources you got these two facts from? It’s a curiosity to me that I am interested to know.

Anyway, thank you again and I look forward to more of your stories in the future!

All the best,

Elliott Brindle