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British writer (born 1944)
Bernard Cornwell
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Bernard Cornwell, recipient of an OBE for services to making history slightly less dusty (born 23 February 1944), is an English author of historical novels and a meticulously detailed history of the Waterloo campaign. He is most notoriously known for his sprawling series of novels chronicling the life of a Napoleonic Wars rifleman, the insubordinate and brutally effective Richard Sharpe. Not content with one epoch, he also penned The Saxon Stories, a thirteen-novel epic detailing the bloody and mud-caked unification of England.
His body of work is a veritable tour of English history's most violent moments, organized into five primary series, alongside a collection of contemporary thrillers for when he presumably grew tired of chainmail and cannon fire. A signature feature of his historical novels, and one you should pay attention to, is the end note. It's a candid debriefing on where his narrative took liberties with history and where it hewed unnervingly close to the truth, often pointing out what remains of the battlefields for any morbidly curious tourists. Beyond the fictional retelling of Waterloo in his Sharpe series, he also wrote a non-fiction deep dive into the battle itself.
Apparently, people enjoy this sort of thing. Three of his historical novel series have been dragged onto the small screen: the Sharpe television series by ITV, the grim and gritty The Last Kingdom, a co-production by the BBC and later Netflix, and The Winter King, a grim reimagining of Arthurian legend for MGM+. He now resides in the United States with his wife, splitting his time between the seasonal extremes of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina. One assumes the climate is conducive to plotting historical bloodshed.[1]
Biography
Cornwell was born in London in 1944, a "war baby," as they say. His parentage is a story in itself: his father was a Canadian airman, William Oughtred,[1] and his mother, Dorothy Cornwell, was an Englishwoman serving in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was subsequently adopted and raised in the less-than-glamorous confines of Thundersley, Essex, by the Wiggins family. This was not your average upbringing. The Wigginses were devout members of the Peculiar People, a strict sect of religious pacifists whose beliefs forbade frivolity of any kind. They even banned medicine until 1930, presumably relying on prayer to handle things like appendicitis. In a twist that should surprise no one, reacting to a childhood steeped in the iron-clad certainty of Christian Fundamentalists, he rejected all religion and emerged a committed atheist.[2]
Upon the death of his adoptive father, he took the sensible step of changing his surname by deed poll from Wiggins to Cornwell, his birth mother's maiden name. He had already been using it as a pen name, a small act of rebellion that became a permanent identity.[3] The story of his biological father remained a blank page until he was 58. While on a book tour, he casually mentioned to a journalist that "what I wanted to see in Vancouver was my real father."[1] This led to a meeting where he discovered not only his father but also a set of half-siblings with whom he shared an unnerving number of traits. It was there he also learned his genealogy,[3] which traced back to the historical Uhtred the Bold. Yes, that Uhtred. The universe occasionally hands writers their plots on a silver platter, and he was wise enough not to refuse it, later using this ancestor as the foundation for his Saxon Stories.[4]
Cornwell’s formal education took place at Monkton Combe School in Somerset. He went on to read history at University College London[5] between 1963 and 1966,[6] after which he briefly worked as a teacher. He made at least three attempts to join the British armed forces, a path that would have dramatically altered his literary output, but was rejected each time due to myopia. A man destined to write about war instead of fighting in one.
After his brief stint in education, Cornwell found a home at the BBC, working on its program Nationwide. He was eventually promoted to head of current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland—a role that must have provided ample material on conflict. He later moved to Thames Television as the editor of Thames News.[7]
His first marriage dissolved in the 1970s.[3] In 1978, while working in Edinburgh for BBC Northern Ireland, he met Judy, an American travel agent and mother of three. He followed her to the United States in 1979, they married, and he began the tedious process of immigration. He was unable to secure a United States Permanent Resident Card (a green card), and so, barred from regular employment, he turned to writing novels. It was an activity that, conveniently, did not require a work permit.[1] Bureaucracy, it seems, is the mother of historical fiction. He later became a full American citizen, closing that particular chapter.[3][8]
Career
As a child, Cornwell was an admirer of the novels of C. S. Forester, particularly those that followed the naval career of the fictional officer Horatio Hornblower during the Napoleonic Wars. He noticed a glaring omission in the literary landscape: while the navy had its hero, there was no equivalent figure for the army. Motivated by this gap and the pressing need to make a living, he decided to write one himself. For his protagonist, he created a rifleman, a soldier from the ranks, who would be present at most of the significant battles of the Peninsular War. The character's name, Sharpe, was borrowed from the rugby player Richard Sharp.[9][10]
Cornwell's initial plan was to throw his new character directly into the bloody chaos of the Siege of Badajoz. He wisely decided to warm up first, producing Sharpe's Eagle and Sharpe's Gold, both published in 1981.[11] Having found his footing, he tackled the brutal story of Badajoz in Sharpe's Company, published in 1982. This was the beginning of a seven-book deal and a character that would define much of his career.
In collaboration with his wife Judy, Cornwell also wrote a series of novels under the pseudonym "Susannah Kells." These included A Crowning Mercy (1983), Fallen Angels (1984), and Coat of Arms (also known as The Aristocrats) in 1986. His own strict Protestant upbringing served as a dark backdrop for A Crowning Mercy, which is set during the turmoil of the English Civil War. In 1987, he also published Redcoat, a standalone novel about the American Revolutionary War set in Philadelphia during the British occupation of 1777.
A television production company eventually came knocking, interested in adapting the first eight Sharpe novels. They had a specific request: they needed a prequel to establish the character's backstory and, for co-funding purposes, it needed a significant role for Spanish characters. The result was Sharpe's Rifles, published in 1987, which follows Sharpe during the harrowing English retreat to A Coruña. This novel laid the groundwork for the successful Sharpe television series starring Sean Bean, an actor who would become inextricably linked with the character.[12]
This period also saw him venture into modern thrillers, all unified by a sailing theme: Wildtrack (1988), Sea Lord (or Killer's Wake) (1989), Crackdown (1990), Stormchild (1991), and the political thriller Scoundrel (1992).
For a significant portion of his career, Cornwell maintained a punishing pace of two books a year, only slowing to one annually as he entered his sixties.[3] He describes his approach to historical fiction as a blend of a "big story"—the actual historical events—and a "little story," the fictional plot that navigates it. The author Patrick O'Brian, whose Aubrey-Maturin series explored the same Napoleonic era from a naval perspective, famously remarked that in the novels of Cornwell and C. S. Forester, there was "too much plot, not enough lifestyle." Cornwell, rather than taking offense, accepted this as a compliment, an accurate assessment of their differing styles. He seemed to appreciate the comparison to Forester.[3]
With the immense success of the Sharpe series, he branched out. Azincourt, released in the UK in October 2008, focuses on an archer participating in the Battle of Agincourt, a catastrophic defeat for the French during the Hundred Years' War. In 2004, he published The Last Kingdom, the first book in the Saxon Stories. This series centers on Uhtred of Bebbanburg and chronicles the violent birth of England under King Alfred the Great. Cornwell had realized that few people in England knew their own country's origin story, unlike Americans who can point to a specific date. This historical amnesia became his "big story." His newfound ancestral connection provided the "little story" of Uhtred.[3][13][14]
The Fort, published in 2010, is another standalone novel, this time returning to the American Revolutionary War to recount the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779.
By any measure, Bernard Cornwell has been phenomenally successful. By 2015, his book sales had surpassed 30 million copies across his various series and individual novels, and he continues to write.[1]
Honours
For his services to literature and television production, Cornwell was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours.[15] A nice bit of official recognition for a man who spent his life writing about rebels and outsiders.
Novel series
Sharpe stories
Main article: Sharpe (novel series)
This is the series that started it all. It follows the bloody career of Richard Sharpe, a common soldier who rises through the ranks of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. The initial eleven books thrust Sharpe into the heart of the Peninsular Wars, serving under Arthur Wellesley on the Iberian Peninsula. This arc began with Sharpe's Rifles and concluded with Sharpe's Waterloo (published in the US simply as Waterloo). Cornwell later returned to the character, writing prequels (Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress, Sharpe's Trafalgar, and Sharpe's Prey) that detail Sharpe's earlier service in India and his hard-won commission. He also penned a sequel, Sharpe's Devil, set six years after the wars. Since 2003, he has continued to fill in the gaps, writing "missing adventures" set during the Peninsular War, bringing the total to 22 novels. For the truly dedicated, the Sharpe Appreciation Society has published three of his short stories: "Sharpe's Skirmish", "Sharpe's Christmas", and "Sharpe's Ransom".
Cornwell notes that he was initially skeptical about the casting of Sean Bean for the television role. His doubts were short-lived. He was so impressed by Bean's performance that he dedicated Sharpe's Battle to him. He has admitted that he began to subtly alter the character in the books to match Bean's portrayal, stating he "could not imagine Sharpe as anyone else." One of his original issues was physical; Bean didn't match the black-haired man from the early books. But he found Bean's grasp of the character's essence so perfect that he simply stopped mentioning Sharpe's hair color.[16] A pragmatic solution.
Warlord Chronicles
Main article: The Warlord Chronicles
This trilogy is Cornwell's plunge into the murky, myth-laden world of Arthurian Britain. The series presents a post-Roman Britain teetering on the brink of collapse, a land besieged by Anglo-Saxon invaders from the East and Irish raiders from the West. Internally, the native Britons are fractured by the power struggles of petty kingdoms and the ideological clash between the old Druidic faith and the encroaching influence of Christianity. Cornwell has repeatedly stated that these are his personal favorites. "I have to confess that of all the books I have written these three are my favourites," he has said.[17] One gets the sense this is the story he felt most compelled to tell.
Grail Quest novels
Main article: The Grail Quest
This series shifts the focus to the mid-14th century and the obsessive search for the Holy Grail against the backdrop of the Hundred Years' War. The protagonist, an English archer named Thomas of Hookton, is pulled into the quest after his father is murdered by a shadowy figure known only as "The Harlequin," who is also seeking the Grail. For a time, it seemed the story was complete. Cornwell mentioned that after finishing Heretic, the third book, he "started another Thomas of Hookton book, then stopped it—mainly because I felt that his story ended in Heretic and I was just trying to get too much from him." He left the door open, however, adding, "Which doesn't mean I won't pick the idea up again sometime in the future."[18] He eventually did, returning to the character in 1356, published in 2012.
Saxon Stories/The Last Kingdom
Main article: The Saxon Stories
This series explores the birth of England from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. The idea for the series was famously sparked by the discovery of his own ancestry, tracing back to the historical Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who became the template for the series' protagonist, Uhtred.[13] Cornwell identified a gap in the popular consciousness: most English people were unaware of how their nation was forged from the fires of the Viking invasions.[1] Uhtred, a Saxon nobleman raised by Danes, becomes the narrative lens through which we witness this struggle. He reluctantly serves Alfred the Great—a king he respects but personally dislikes—aiding Alfred's grand ambition to unite the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The series continues long after Alfred's death, following his heirs as they strive to complete his dream. The first novel appeared in 2004, and the thirteenth and final book was published in 2020.[19]
The Last Kingdom and The Pale Horseman formed the basis for the first season of the television series The Last Kingdom. The Lords of the North and Sword Song were adapted for the second. A third series, based on The Burning Land and Death of Kings, was released in November 2018, followed by a fourth in April 2020. A fifth and final series was released on March 9, 2022.[20]
Starbuck Chronicles
Main article: The Starbuck Chronicles
A series of four novels set during the American Civil War, following Nathaniel Starbuck, a Boston native who finds himself fighting for the Confederate Army. The series is notable for featuring an appearance by the son of Richard Sharpe, tying two of Cornwell's worlds together in a subtle nod to his readers.
Thriller series
Cornwell's modern thrillers are all mysteries with sailing as a central theme. Being a traditional sailor himself—he owns a Cornish Crabber named Royalist—he writes from a place of experience. According to his website, however, this series may be permanently docked: "I enjoyed writing the thrillers, but suspect I am happier writing historical novels. I'm always delighted when people want more of the sailing books, but I'm not planning on writing any more, at least not now – but who knows? Perhaps when I retire".[21] Don't hold your breath.
Nonfiction
In addition to the fictionalized account of the battle of Waterloo in Sharpe's Waterloo, Cornwell also penned a comprehensive nonfiction book on the subject. Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles was released in September 2014, just in time for the battle's 200th anniversary.[22] Because if you're going to write about something, you may as well become an expert on it.
Works
Main article: Bernard Cornwell bibliography