Hello Bernard,

It was near a year ago that I wrote to you about my father who had read all your Sharpe books.

You actually emailed him and told him of another one coming soon. Thanks for that.

Since then, I was given a copy of The Last Kingdom. I was dubious that anything could rival Sharpe and at first I did not read it. No offence. In fact, take it as a compliment. I just didn’t want to be disappointed. However, one day, I felt as if that book called to me. I took it out and looked at it. Then began to read…

To me, at that time in my life, it was even better than Sharpe.

I was once a naive and very skinny 17 year old boy in the Royal Marines. Scottish too. I’m not given to fancy but there have been times in my life – and I hope in yours too – where the world does not hold so tightly to it’s solid foundations or rules, and reality peels a layer or two to show us something else.

Uhtred and the old gods opened up something in me. As an innocent child, I was forced to be a catholic by my parents. I did not like it. I hated the morbid pictures of saints and the “son of god” dying on a cross. I remember that. It gave me an unsettling feeling. Their tedious prayers and beliefs quelled a natural fire in me that, as I read about Uhtred, realised was still there and wanted to burn again. Perhaps it was the simply the right time, but the Last Kingdom Books opened up old memories, possibly of an ancestral nature, that made the candle light grow into a flame. It might sound strange to you, but my legs seemed to become more solid and more connected to the ground.

You may laugh, or raise an eyebrow when I tell you I had a bronze hammer amulet made up by a Norse craftsman whereupon the old fierceness and power I’d felt as a child before I was confirmed to the “nailed God” came back to me. My life and circumstances have improved markedly since reading your books and having my amulet. Of course, it’s down to my choices and actions, but these have been affected by the power that surged through me. It filled me up. I performed a small ceremony around fire to renounce christianity completely. I saw it fly off me into the smoke swirling around my body – and then I laughed. The next day I swam in the clear blue sea here in Sydney and cleaned myself of all those old beliefs in sin and shame which did me no service and instead subjugated my true nature under feelings of guilt and repression the Ragnar Lords would have belly laughed at. My humour has come back to me in the most useful and wonderful ways.

And so, for this I thank you. You had a part to play.

I think you can tell much of the nature of a person in how they write. Little clues, subtle intuitions or visions come through at times – I like to stop reading at those time, close my eyes, and let the message through –  I wonder sometimes if you are not Merlin himself in another time.

I have not read your Arthur Books, yet.

I’m saving them for when I return to the UK. I will take a trip to Cornwall and Wales and read them there. I get a strong feeling in the celtic regions and so it’ll be more enjoyable there.

There is one question, I would ask you – I hope you will answer me.

It is simply, have you read Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy?

And what you thought of those books, if you had.

That is all.

And thanks again for sending a message to my dad. He couldn’t believe it. We had a good laugh about this. He was also very pleased to hear another Sharpe novel was being written. As was I.

I wish you and your family all the best,

Stephen