Hi,

thank you for War Lord and an excellent conclusion to the Last Kingdom series.  I shall miss Uthred.

I was just wondering whether any particular location inspired your setting of the Devil’s Valley?  From the map it looks very close to my home town of Barnard Castle.  It’s not particularly high in the Pennines but some of the description seems to fit.  The site of the Norman Castle sits on a crag, overlooking the Tees, where there was a Roman ford.  There is a Roman road that leads across the ford to the south west, joining the main east west Roman road across the Pennines (the A66) four miles away at the village of Bowes, which is of Roman origin itself and so would have probably have been inhabited in Saxon times.  There was a small (now infilled) valley beneath the crag but sadly no burial cairns.  Could this have been the location you had in mind or is it just wishful thinking by me?

Angus Wheeler