Dear Bernard

I’m someone that has always felt a bit out of place/between worlds maybe, as  I first understood it half Irish and half English (simple as that!)

My father always had a deep love of both history and mythology and always seemed to make the two not seem so much enemies but two sides of the same coin

I grew up with the histories and ‘mythologies’ of many different cultures as my bed time stories and so through my father I inherited a love for both historical fact and the ideologies and beliefs behind these different cultures and how they intertwine

my dad first read the Sharpe series but he really fell in love with your writing with the Warlord Chronicles and (as a proud Irishman) specifically enjoyed a telling of that tale from a Celtic perspective (the black shields an obvious favourite of his)

He encouraged me to read those books when I was about 11ish? going on 33 now so…bloody hell, yeah

but for some reason no matter what my dad would talk to me about it would always be the stories the Saxons and the Vikings and the making of England that I wanted to hear about the most, it just rang a bell, not just historically but the similar beliefs they held, a shared culture separated by what just under 300 years and the same stretch of sea? I was always drawn to it as if by (I won’t say it)

When the first of the Saxon books came out I was in Rhodes and about 15 and me and my dad were basically fighting over this book in the middle of paradise, and we’ve loved reading about Uhtred from then until the last book

moreover those books from Derfel to Uhtred helped het me through alot, a hell of a lot (you don’t need to know my whole life story) and there were a myriad of reasons  why I’m still alive your books are definitely one of them so just wanted to say thanks

Also my mom just got her ancestry DNA results back and she’s 5%Welsh 5%scottish 70%Mercian and 20%Norwegian ) sometimes things makes sense of themselves

Even if you never read this, just wanted to say cheers mate

Mikey Moloney