Dear Bernard Cornwell, Love a good historical novel – & serious history, too – & am now reading your Uhtred novels with delight. I take it that the name Skade is taken from the Danish for “harm”. I also guess that you must have read Bengtsson’s “The Long Ships”; if I am wrong – & it does happen occasionally – beat Amazon about the ears to get a copy! It’s a lively, wide-ranging, often funny, story – although written by a Swede – but, to me, as an African English-educated Dane, it also gives me a foothold in the Norseman’s world; even modern “Scandiknaves” (my beloved late 1st wife’s epithet) will do the same if pushed hard. One of my aunts is on record as enticing Gestapo agents & Danish Nazis to her flat, where they were killed by her friends. The amazing thing was that she survived but, then, sexual contact with even distantly Jewish ladies was “strang verboten”. It also solved a problem with a strange comment by Buchan (“4 Hostages”) comparing the silliness of Irish mythology with “the grave good sense of the Norse sagas”: the Norse gods were thoroughly capricious but a man & a woman were expected to deal with this, this is what life throws at you & the only answer is to take any opportunities given to you &, for the rest, face adversity with dignity. As a retired scientist & statistician, I agree. One’s good name & its memory in the minds of your family & friends is the most important thing. Of course, the Saxons had the same problem but took instead the view of Bede’s “sparrow flying through the Hall” which was tenable & moving, but needed – in the end – an improved military approach for survival. Actually, why am I lecturing you? You probably know all of this much better than I. May I claim a lecturer’s privilege? Even if I was basically a Jack of all scientific Trades & not a writer of damn good novels backed with real study? Yours, Stephen Cridland