Dear Mr. Cornwell,

I don’t want to tell you anything important and I don’t ask you for anything. I’m just an ordinary person from the Czech Republic and I would just like to thank you.

Next year in March I will be 60 years old, I have 3 children and 2 grandchildren. My youngest daughter had really serious problems, we were afraid if she would live and then if she would walk. All this happened in 2010, when she was 10 years old. In 2013 I went diving with her for the first time in the sea, she now has a boyfriend, is studying and I hope she can live a full life. She brought me your books. Before that I loved Harry Potter and many other Czech and foreign books.

She brought me your “The Last Kingdom” from the so-called store, “cheap books” – that’s where you can sometimes get great things and for poor students it’s a good source of gifts for parents. I only say this because I still remember the moment that changed me so significantly. When I devoured the first volume of Uthred’s story, I was looking for another. So I was given another volume as a gift because they had it there too and cheaply, so it was a good gift to stock up on.

Since then I’ve fallen in love, I’ve read all of about Uthred, the Archer, Sharp, Azincourt and the Warrior’s Tale.

Thank you for all of this and please don’t be angry if my words are a dozen.

The only problem I have had with your books was when, in a discussion about formal attire for a family event, I defied my wife by saying (I think these are Uthred’s words) that “a real man walks around in a steel shirt with and a leather lining that smells of the dried blood of his enemies.”

I’ve never read anything so beautiful in my life, I’ve never had such great friends as Uthred, Sharp, Harper and others.

Petr Plachký