Dear Mr Cornwell,

I have been reading your novels for years and find them absolutely fascinating. I am halfway through ‘The Last Kingdom’ and am enjoying it immensely. Living, as I do, in England, and loving our traditions (what’s left of them) and the countryside, I like to feel that I can identify with some of the people and events that happened here well over a millenia ago. Call it fantasy, but it does give me a lift when I think that the events (or ones quite like them) you describe so well in your books, may actually have happened just down the road from me. Knowing that you emigrated to the States over 30 years ago, my question(s) to you are: living so far away from the location of most of your novels, from what do you draw your inspiration? I know you must do an immense amount of research but at the end of the day, does the storyline just come into your head? My second question is, you write about England so much, don’t you ever miss living here?

Kindest regards,

Bill Pink