Greetings, Mr. Cornwell
I hope this message finds you well. I’ve been a reader of your books since my father gave me Harlequin as a Christmas present back in 2003. This is my first time writing in this site, though.
I have just finished the Saxon Stories, and realized I should come here to express my gratitude. I enjoy your work very much. Thank you for all those great books and for offering us historical fiction of the highest quality! What I find amazing about historical fiction is how it offers insights about other periods and stimulates the reader to learn more about the past. It is thrilling to discover how the world has changed, and historical fiction helps me to put the present in perspective.
While reading the historical note at the end of War Lord, I could sort of relate to your remark about how brief formal education can be about some subjects. I have always felt that my history classes were very superficial about subjects related to Antiquity and the Middle Ages. To give you a better idea, I translated everything (it is literally everything) my history book from school had to say about the Anglo-Saxon period (even though nobody can possibly expect a Brazilian history book to match a British one in terms of Anglo-Saxon knowledge!):
“In the fifth century, Germanic tribes, mostly Angles and Saxons, occupied the British Isles and there established seven barbarian kingdoms. Between the sixth and the seventh century, the Saxon heptarchy gradually developed into an arrangement of three kingdoms and, in the ninth century, they merged into an Anglo-Saxon state led by Egbert, king of Wessex. Feudalism was brought to England during that process.
“The end of Roman rule over England was followed by the Germanic invasions of Saxons, Angles and Jutes coming from the continent. Pushing the native Celts to the North, they formed several kingdoms: the Jutes founded Kent in the South; the Saxons founded Essex, Wessex and Sussex, also in the South; and the Angles founded East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia in the midlands and the North-east. Those seven kingdoms made up the Jute-Anglo-Saxon heptarchy. Nonetheless, the heptarchy was not effectively united. Unity was only achieved after the invasion of the Vikings, or Danes, in the eleventh century”.
[the remainder of the text follows with “in 1066 (…)”]
Thankfully historical fiction is here to make history more enticing!
All the best
Eduardo Bergamaschi