Dear Bernard,

Thanks for your response to my question about casting of characters from book to film… oh my word… yes!!! David Bradley as Merlin would be inspired!

Hope you don’t mind me asking another question, but here goes.

The historical fiction niche is well and truly filled by various authors covering pretty much every age, era, century of the human story (I kind of lump in clan of the cave bear with historical fiction.. rightly or wrongly) Its a safe bet (IMHO) that you’ve pretty much closed off and own (in a good way) the Napoleonic and Saxon/dark age eras as your realm. (I by no way mean the other stuff out there telling stories in these times aren’t good… some are…) So are there any eras you feel you’d want to cover that perhaps haven’t been as well explored by Historical Fiction?  I’ve seen people ask you about Robin Hood, Civil War, Normans and Romans but they are all pretty well established under other authors… and as you’ve said not that interesting for you (The eras… not the Authors!!!) . Hell even Napoleon and Wellingtons stories from cradle to grave have been covered (and brilliantly so by Mr Scarrow!)… So where else would you love to flex your story telling muscle? or maybe the question should be who else (historical figure wise) would you fancy having a stab at (no pun intended) writing about as a novel/series… and please don’t say another story about Shakespeare… he’s a good chap but ultimately I firmly believe   sword always beats pen/quill… when it comes to heroes (present company accepted  naturally!) Wolfe tone strikes me as someone who would appeal to your love of rebels and rabble-rousers… not to mention the Irish. But I guess he was more quill than sword so I don’t know. Being a Kentish lad smugglers quite often appeal…  just saying!

James Shoebridge