Hello Mr Cornwell my name is Ceilidh Devine and I am going to be a historical fiction writer, evermore so due to your good self. your shared experience in the 2011 writers and artists year book, has filled me with even more determination, I am a student at Northampton university studying history, when I first decided to go to uni, I was doing a creative writing degree, few weeks into the cause I realised I had no stories, and where is the greatest stories, well there in history, can not spell history without story. so I left writing, the teacher of the cause, said I would never be a writer with out his degree!! silly man, I am in my final year and have a book full of ideas, plots and stories, my academic history books, my word so boring! my teachers have to constantly tell me to stop telling a story in my essays, I had to learn quickly to write academically, I have to some extent I hit C+ and B- having dyslexia that’s pretty good. now I am in final year and am so exited, I get to throw away all the boring facts and make them interesting stories. I was worried that due to the fact I don’t have the writing degree maybe I couldn’t write, however not now when you say, don’t need them, I always thought that, how can you teach writing, if your a writer you write, simple as. thank you for saying that, thank you for all you said, it spoke to me like you are telling me not to ever give up, its meant to be! thank you so much and I love the fact you say. you are an entertainer, not an historian, so entertain, yes Mr Cornwell I am not a historian, I am a story teller!! yours Ceilidh Devine