Hi Bernard, I love your books. I’ve been writing essays on mental illness and it made me think of a few things you deal with in the warlord chronicles and Azincourt. I was wondering where you got the idea for certain disabilities/horrible events giving people special powers or a second sight(eg Nimue and rape, Morgan and burns) and whether it was an idea that was common at the time, or whether you just made it up. Obviously suffering has been an important element of Christianity over the centuries but that seems to have had more to do with ideas of humility and emulating Christ than gaining secret knowledge. Also, in Azincourt, the main character hears the voices of saints, and i was wondering whether you envisioned this within the context of your story as being a direct message from god, the voice of his conscience, or a symptom of mental illness misconstrued as one of the first two? It seemed to serve him well in any case. Also if he was hearing voices of saints wouldn’t the church at the time have condemned him as being a heretic? How did they decide what was “really” the word of god? Apologies if this doesn’t make much sense! Thank you for taking the time to read this, Sophie