Dear Bernard Cornwell, ***On 23 May, 2007, Alan Frantz asked some questions about your use of British vs American English language, particularly related to the use of the subjunctive. One of the examples he used was *Eadred proposed that we formed an army and marched it across the hills to capture Eoferwic.* Alan commented *I would normally expect form and march.* *You have two similar usages of past tense that seem odd to me. Perhaps they are an early English subjunctive, I don t know, I m not a language historian. Or perhaps they are a British style, and just unfamiliar to me.* *** Your response on this point was * As for the vocabulary, sorry, but I was raised and educated in Britain and so use a British English, about which I am unrepentant.* ***I think both of you are right, in different ways. From my position as an Australian, probably closer to British than American English and with some knowledge of linguistics, grammar and teaching English language, I think this is an issue of formal and informal usage, rather than British or American language use. ***The use of the subjunctive has pretty much died out in informal English (I am one of the few people I know who uses it). It is also dying out in formal (including written) English. I dont know enough to comment on the use of the subjunctive, if it existed, in Anglo-Saxon. Perhaps I should get back to Chaucer, who was later, but retained some of the structures. ***The subjunctive, as we have it now in English, may have been one of the consequences of the codification of English grammar according to Latin, rather than native English rules in the 17th and 18th centuries. ***So I think it is appropriate for Bernard Cornwell to use a non-subjunctive construction in British English in an Anglo-Saxon saga and popular novel, and equally appropriate for a reader to identify this as a possible aberration from formal grammar. This is particularly so if, as I suspect, Alan Frantz has learnt English formally, as a non-native speaker. ***I hope this is of some help and/or interest to both of you and I apologise if my comments are either wrong or cause offence, or seem totally prattish. Elizabeth, Canberra, Australia