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Author

Bernard Cornwell

1944

Bernard Cornwell is one of the most commercially important names in historical fiction, known for fast-moving military novels built around war, loyalty, survival and national identity.

Bernard Cornwell was born in London in 1944 and was adopted by a strict religious family in Essex. He later studied history at university and worked for the BBC, eventually becoming involved in television news and current affairs. After moving to the United States, he began writing fiction when employment restrictions made it difficult for him to continue his broadcasting career. The result was Sharpe’s Eagle, published in 1981, which introduced the rifleman Richard Sharpe and launched one of modern historical fiction’s best-known military series.

Cornwell’s novels cover a wide chronological range. The Sharpe books follow the British Army through the Napoleonic Wars; the Saxon Stories, beginning with The Last Kingdom, dramatise the formation of England during the Viking invasions; and the Warlord Chronicles reinterpret the Arthurian legends within post-Roman Britain. He has also written about the American Civil War, the Hundred Years’ War and the Elizabethan stage. His strengths are battlefield geography, command decisions and the practical life of soldiers, but his stories also examine religion, identity and political legitimacy. Historical notes commonly explain where the surviving evidence ends and invention begins, making his novels accessible entry points into several major periods.

Periods and events

Anglo-Saxon England Viking Age Early Medieval Rheged and Northumbria Danelaw Napoleonic Era Liberation of Spain & Invasion of France Peninsular War Alfred the Great and Wessex Hundred Years’ War Battle of Agincourt Hundred Years’ War in France Battle of Crécy Post-Roman Britain Arthurian Britain

Series

Series by Bernard Cornwell (6 series)

The Last Kingdom in Order

Sword of Kings

4.7

War Lord

4.8

Sharpe in Order

Sharpe’s Waterloo

4.3

Sharpe’s Assassin

4.4

Sharpe’s Devil

4.1

The Grail Quest in Order

by Bernard Cornwell 4 books 4.3

The Grail Quest follows Thomas of Hookton, an English archer whose search for the truth about his family becomes entangled with the opening decades of the Hundred Years’ War. The novels move through the capture of La Roche-Derrien, the assault on Caen, the Battle of Crécy, Neville’s Cross,…

Harlequin

4.5

Vagabond

4.2

Heretic

4.3

1356

4.3

Starbuck Chronicles in Order

by Bernard Cornwell 4 books 4.4

The Starbuck Chronicles follow Nathaniel Starbuck, the son of a prominent Boston abolitionist preacher, after chance and personal loyalty draw him into Confederate service at the outbreak of the American Civil War. Serving first in the Faulconer Legion, Starbuck must prove himself among soldiers who distrust his Northern…

Rebel

4.2

Copperhead

4.4

Battle Flag

4.4

The Bloody Ground

4.5

The Warlord Chronicles in Order

by Bernard Cornwell 3 books 4.4

The Warlord Chronicles are narrated by Derfel Cadarn, an ageing monk recalling his years as one of Arthur’s warriors in post-Roman Britain. After Uther’s death, Arthur returns to protect the child king Mordred and tries to unite rival British kingdoms against Saxon invasion. Derfel follows him through civil…

The Winter King

4.3

Enemy of God

4.4

Excalibur

4.5

Crowning Mercy in Order

by Bernard Cornwell 2 books 4.3

The Crowning Mercy novels follow the Lazender family through two periods of upheaval in European history. A Crowning Mercy is set amid the religious and political violence of the English Civil War, when a young woman’s inheritance draws her into a contest involving family loyalty, faith and royalist…