I have read every published novel you have written, with great enjoyment, and pleasure at your historical accuracy and first-hand research on location.  I just finished reading WATERLOO, your first non-fiction work, and it read wonderfully, with clarity, first-hand quotations of those involved, and brought many things to light for me.  As a retired archdeacon of the Anglican Church, I continue to be amused and appreciative of the bubbles you burst concerning those in dog collars.

A typo in my copy that the editors missed: p.65 – “…so Wellington rode three miles west to meet Blucher at a windmill in the village of Brye….”  While on page 82, Wellington rides EAST to meet with Blucher, clearly the correct compass heading.

You capture the horror, the confusion, the bravery and cowardice, and your analysis at the end of the book provides insightful context.  I had read Jac Weller and others, but yours becomes definitive in my library.

I am enjoying too your Saxon series; my family, like yours, tells stories of Bamburg, my grandparents coming to Canada in 1911 from Northumberland.  Family history includes northern names like Bamborough, Morpeth, Johnson, etc.  I was disappointed at first that Alfred the Great comes across as wimpy and rigid, but your most recent novel, after Alfred’s death, gives a positive perspective.  I think your setting is accurate in that the church, encountering the pagan culture, was hostile, even cruel, and without any compromise in those earlier days.  Thank you for your fine work from an avid reader in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ronald E Harrison