Hi I’ve just finished reading the second of your Warlord books, having already read the first and the last. I thought it was the best of the three, with a lot of twists and action. After reading it, I went on the web to read about what historical and mythical information there is about Arthur. While doing so I had a thought which you might find interesting, or which you might have had already. When you write historical novels you manage to frame a lot the legendary material in an original, entertaining, yet historically plausible way. But with the Arthur legends there are two problems with this. Firstly, there is no way of getting round the fact that the saxons actually won eventually, Arthur or no Arthur. Secondly, reconciling Arthurs departure, sleep, and eventual return with actual historical accuracy seems completely impractical. (I pause at this juncture to recompose myself because my girlfriend has just read this and has spent the last ten minutes laughing at me and calling me a geek) Then I read about the Bretons, who moved to Brittany in France because of the Saxon invasion. I thought about William the Conqueror, part Breton, and the Bretons in his army in 1066. And I thought, in a way, King Arthur did return victorious! Its not such a stretch to imagine that Arthurs escape was to Brittany, nor is it that if he established a line of descent, he would be one of William the Conquerors ancestors. And the Bretons who fought for William at the battle of Hastings would have been descended from those driven out of Britain by the Saxons however many centuris before. This isn’t an idea for a book, just a line of reasoning I thought you might be interested in hearing.

By the way, never read Sharpe, but I loved the Grail Quest books (did research for that give you the idea for doing the Arthur books?), the warlord books, and I think Uhtred is a delightfully dark sort of hero! How many books are there in ALfred and Uhtred? Looking forward to the next one. Thanks for the books! Paul