Hi Mr Cornwell,
It seems myself and my father were never destined to be alike or particularly fond of each other when growing up.However, I got older, as did he, and I/we discovered I am more akin to him than I/He would have liked (and certainly more-so than my brother and my sister) yet now I am 29 and he is 64 and I believe, partially thanks to your telling of the establishing of England, and the telling of the fictitious Uhtred’s story, we are potentially closer than I could have ever imagined. Recently my dad traced back our ancestry to the Danes/Vikings and we live in the North East of England so this really struck home. I genuinely think I owe the relationship we have together today to the story of Uhtred. Now more than ever do we both realise we are alike in so many ways, and it wasn’t until we both searched each other’s bookcases we realised we must have read at least 75% of the same stories.
Uhtred is still a great talking point between us… unfortunately my other half will not, YET, allow us to call our next first born son to be called either UHTRED or RAGNAR… I guess that name will have to be reserved for my dog :(
Anyways I would just like to say I can’t wait for the next book and for those that say the series has ran its course… they’re wrong!! Especially for a Northumbria lad, and a lad that has fond memories of Babbanburgh and skinny dipping in the North Sea :)
I was too young to read the Sharpe series, although I watched Sean Bean on the telly ;)
Keep up the amazing work and story telling and you will always have a fan in myself and my father.
Thanks,
Paul