Hi! Thank you for writing the books of yours that I have read! I have always been a fan of George Macdonald Fraser, and when I spoke to a fellow fan, he suggested that I read some Sharpe books. I didn’t know where to start, but I found the Uhtred series, and became an immediate fan. I anxiously waited for the third to appear this summer, and discovered that the story is not yet over. There must a fourth volume yet to come to close off all the loose ends. Meanwhile, I read the Stonehenge one and the Harlequin series, and have started on the Arthur series. In each case, I found your attention to detail helped bring out a realistic sense of the epoch. However, in The Winter King, a detail caught my suspicion for anachronism. You mention in the appendix that you claim, as an author, the right to suspend complete accuracy to historical fact in favour of the flow of the story; and I have no reason to debate that. An author needs to have the right to write what he wishes. However, I noticed a reference to hymns sung by the Christians. I have no advanced degree in musicology, but I have taken a few courses, focussing mostly on more modern stuff, like 18th and 19th cc. But my understanding is that in mediaeval times, church music was mostly what we would call chant. Compared to more modern music, it was probaly very slow and almost monotonous, to accommodate the resonances of the draughty cathedrals of the time. The harmonies were what we might call primitive: mostly octaves and fourths and fifths. The singers would have been the monks and church leaders of the time. From such a notion of early church music, the passage in The Winter King that referred to people singing Christina hymns, seemed jarring, and I suspect anachronistic. Of course, one can take the stand that no one knows for certain what such early music sounded like, but one needs to take existing evidence and extrapolate in an orderly manner. Otherwise, we would have no concept of what dinosaurs might have looked like. I wouldn’t want you to take my comment as a kind of -gotcha!- criticism, but as a suggestion for possible reconsideration in the future. I will wait for the fourth Uhtred volume to get written, and expect there might be some loose Christians in the background of that one. May the clash of broadswords drown out the discordant wailing! Thank you! Rein Ende, PS. I actually live near Dundurn Castle, which you visited a couple of years ago. My regret is that I did not attend your reading at that time.