Dear Mr. Cornwell, I suspect that you receive an overwhelming load of mail from your loyal readers, and forgive you in advance for neglecting this correspondence from me. I suspect that it is useful to you to understand your readers and I have read most of your books and greatly enjoyed them. I,as do all of your avid readers I’m sure, feel that the books were personally written for me. I am an exacting critic of historical detail. A professional archaeologist, I specialize in North American prehistory, and can only comment on European history from avocational reading and travel. My family name is derived from the Saxon village of Puttenham in Hertfordshire, an Earldom granted by William to a minor Norman supporter named only as Roger in the church records. My father raised funds for the archaeological discovery of the Norman manor house, and I visited after the excavations were completed. The name in England is spelled Puttenham, in Canada, Puttnam, New England, Putnam, and in the American south, Putman (where that family became illiterate and had others record records for them). Although no records have been found, Roger’s Norman family was likely descended from Norwegians and/or Danes that began the process of annexing and settling Normandy in the latter decades of the 9th century. My mother’s family, the Wrights, hail from Kelvedon Hatch (Kelvenduna, Kelenduna, and Kalenduna in the Little Doomsday Book), in South Essex. A Saxon, Ailric, held a manor and fought a naval battle with William, but lost his lands to Westminster Abbey after the conquest. The other portion of the Saxon estate was eventually gobbled up by William’s half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. The Wrigts came to Plymouth with the Mayflower, and the Putnams followed to Salem in 1640. The lineage becomes incestuous, as is common in small, colonial populations. After infamous involvement in the witch trials, they removed to western Mass. and settled New Salem and Greenfield. French and Abnaki assaults burned buildings and carried some away to captivity in Canada. My grandfathers house in Northampton was sold to Smith College for demolition. When the clapboards were removed, 17th century shutters, burned and hacked with hatchets, were revealed. Although not direct ancestors, Israel and Rufus Putnam distinguished themselves at Ticonderoga, in the Ohio territory and surveying with George Washington. Isreal is one of several officers credited with the famous phrase “don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes”. He seems an unlikely source, however. More to the point, he certainly did admonish his men at Bunker Hill to “aim low, boys”. The Putnams and another related family from Hertforshire, the Houltons, left western Mass in 1801, and followed anifest destiny in an unlikely direction, north rather than west. Guided by a Maliseet (Malecite, Wolastuqiyik), they settled Houlton, Maine in modern Aroostook County. With Acadians to the north and transplanted loyalists to the east, my own ancestor, Aaron Putnam built the first frame house, complete with interior brick walls and loop-holes to dissuade the redcoats from investing Houlton in 1813. Fifty years later, his grandson rode to war as a cavalryman, Captain “Blackhawk” Putnam, to fight in the Battle of Rich Mountain, where he was shot of his horse, wounded in the thigh, and crawled around behind rebel lines for nine days. He was crippled and returned to convert Aaron’s house into the Blackhawk Tavern, where he served pints for the remainder of the war. My Irish Grandmother, a potato famine Connolly from County Donegal, arrived in the northern Maine potato country via Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island I now work with Maliseet and Mi’kmaq Nations conducting archaeology in Maine and maritime Canada. We found a late 17th century sword pommel in a collection of stone artifacts from a carry trail site deep in the North Maine Woods. The pommel is an effigy of a human head, made of cast iron and gilt with pure silver. The motif is Indonesian (Batavia, VOC?), and I dream of characters such as Baron de Castine, the Dutch Frigate Flying Horse, and the Wabanaki sagamores who must have participated in great events, a global struggle of nations, played out in a wilderness and leaving few written records. But that is the realm of fiction, and alas, other than reading historical fiction as a pastime, I dwell in a world of physical evidence. Like Sharpe’s travails with British Army bureaucracy, the University has treated me in similar fashion The Belzoni Society of Alaska grants several dubious awards. I don’t aspire for the “Rusting on one’s laurels” award just yet, but covet the “Golden Screw”. My only revenge has been to raise $50k to fund research along the northern Silk Road along the southern flank of the TianShan and northern edge of the Tarim Basin in Summer 2010. I really must learn some appropriate four letter words in Uyghur. Thank you for the gift of your books, they provide a valuable escape from petty University politics. Please continue to write for those of us that need you. Best Wishes, Dave