Hi

I’ve never sent a message to a author or public figure before but seeing that this is the last uthred book I felt I wanted to let you know how inspiring your work has been to me over decades. I’ve read all your books and was especially inspired by Sharpe, uthred and your tales of longbowmen. I read sharpes adventures in boyhood and ended up serving ten years in the British army in a infantry unit as a result of family history, my passion for our country and its history but also possibly a bit more than I’d like to admit was of the imagination created by yourself and your characters inbedded in history. I was reading Sharpe laying on my own fighting kit in between fighting rolling Street battles in Iraq. Uthred is another inspiring character, hard, fair, determined and won’t give up. These insights into another’s mind can’t help but make all your readers aspire to be a little more resilient. The fascination with our history has led me to serve our country, became a Woodcraft and wilderness skills instructor and Traditional English Bowyer making medieval war bows/longbows  for a living and a bit of a ametuer historian. If you’d like to check out my work my at philbrookelongbows there’s links on there to my social media with lots of images of my work. If you ever want a fully working warbow for yourself to have as a display please let me know as it would be very satisfying to know you had one. Also there’s no angle, I’m not looking for promo or anything like that. It would just be fitting to know the master wordsmith had a master Bowyers bow! Thanks again and hope to read many more of your books. Fingers crossed we get another tale of the longbow men to inspire us working class folk! My bookshelf is packed high with your books waiting for my kids to grew into them.

All the very best.

Phil Brooke