Dear Bernard. I recently discovered your Lord Uhtred books in the library and read them all in about 3weeks so I wanted you to know just how much they enjoyed them. Its a particularly fascinating period of English history and am surely hoping that you are approached by TV/Film companies to do something: there is usually an interest in filming King Arthur and Robin Hood stories but little about this period and I don’t understand why. I enjoy Uhtred’s take on Paganism and Christianity and his sarcastic comments about saints preaching the gospel to seals and puffins etc made me laugh out loud! Alfred’s saxon Wessex sounded like the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella rather than the mystical land that Thomas Hardy liked to imagine. When I was a child I grew up with the Ladybird book King Alfred the Great which had a picture of Guthrum being baptised.He had no clothes on apart from his underpants… Quite risque for a children’s book from the 1950s but pretty humiliating for a Viking warlord and of course caused much childish glee and merriment at the time and was half expecting to see it mentioned in your story.

Also always fascinated about London in that period, did the Saxons fear the ghosts in the ruins? Did they see the Romans as a race of giants or were they actually knowledgeable about the past. I am now reading London- Biography by Peter Ackroyd which sadly in a book of 800 pages has about 6 dedicated to London in this period, however from what he says you could be wrong in your portrayal as he claims most recent evidence suggests London continued to be lived in, thriving and self governing from the Roman departure onwards like a city-state behind the Roman wall. When William the Conqueror took it over he granted it the right to carry on self governing -it was still using Roman Law.

Finally, as you describe the Saxons being quite handy with cavalry why didn’t they use them at Hastings to see off the Normans? I look forward to the next Lord Uhtred book- hope I won’t have to wait too long!
Andrew Fishman