Dear Bernard Cornwell I just wanted to say a very very big thank you for unknowingly saving me from total despair in the middle of my oxford entrance exam today. The essay question, worth 40% of the marks, had to be based on one event in history, and to assess whether or not the environment had an effect on the outcome. I honestly sat there for around 15 minutes completely clueless as to what to write about when it suddenly struck me that just last week my dad had suggested I read your book “Azincourt”. Subsequently, my essay was written about the events at Agincourt, as I found the historical content in your book fascinating and extremely reliable. The fact that I took most of that content in from the novel in order to write a 3 page essay (which was my maximum limit, I would have happily written more!) also made me realise just how much I had enjoyed reading that novel. As a result it is probably highly likely that I will be reading some of your other books in the near future, again my dad has given me a long list in his determination to get me interested in medieval and early periods of history and I think your novels might succeed! So thank you very much again for inspiring my exam essay, I really just wanted to acknowledge that without reading that novel I probably wouldn’t have written a very good essay! Gemma