Bernard Cornwell

The master of historical fiction presents the iconic story of King Alfred and the making of a nation. As the ninth century wanes, England appears about to be plunged into chaos once more. For the Viking-raised but Saxon-born warrior, Uhtred, whose life seems to shadow the making of England, this presents him with difficult choices. King Alfred is dying and his passing threatens the island of Britain to renewed warfare. Alfred wants his son, Edward, to succeed him but there are other Saxon claimants to the throne as well as ambitious pagan Vikings to the north. Uhtred's loyalty — and his vows — were to Alfred, not to his son, and despite his long years of service to Alfred, he is still not committed to the Saxon cause. His own desire is to reclaim his long lost lands and castle to the north. But the challenge to him, as the king's warrior, is that he knows that he will either be the means of making Alfred's dream of a united and Christian England come to pass or be responsible for condemning it to oblivion. This novel is a dramatic story of the power of tribal commitment and the terrible difficulties of divided loyalties. This is the making of England magnificently brought to life by the master of historical fiction.

'Captivate, kill or destroy the whole force of the enemy' was the order given to the American soldiers. THE FORT is the blistering new novel from worldwide bestseller Bernard Cornwell. Summer 1779. Seven hundred and fifty British soldiers and three small ships of the Royal Navy. Their orders: to build a fort above a harbour to create a base from which to control the New England seaboard. Forty-one American ships and over nine hundred men. Their orders: to expel the British. The battle that followed was a classic example of how the best-laid plans can be disrupted by personality and politics, and of how warfare can bring out both the best and worst in men. It is a timeless tale of men at war, written by a master storyteller.

The latest in the bestselling Alfred series from number one historical novelist, Bernard Cornwell. In the last years of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in failing health, and his heir is an untested youth. The Danes, who have failed so many times to conquer Wessex, smell opportunity! First comes Harald Bloodhair, a savage warrior leading a Viking horde, who is encouraged to cruelty by his woman, Skade. But Alfred still has the services of Uhtred, his unwilling warlord, who leads Harald into a trap and, at Farnham in Surrey, inflicts one of the greatest defeats the Vikings were ever to suffer. This novel, the fifth in the magnificent series of England's history tells of the final assaults on Alfred's Wessex, that Wessex survived to become England is because men like Uhtred defeated an enemy feared throughout Christendom.

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling Harlequin, this is the second instalment in Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series. In Harlequin, Thomas of Hookton travelled to France as an archer and there discovered a shadowy destiny, which linked him to a family of heretical French lords who sought Christendom's greatest relic. Having survived the battle of Crécy, Thomas is sent back to England, charged with finding the Holy Grail. But Thomas is an archer and when a chance comes to fight against an army invading northern England he jumps at it. Plunged into the carnage of Neville's Cross, he is oblivious to other enemies who want to destroy him. He discovers too late that he is not the only person pursuing the grail, and that his rivals will do anything to thwart him. After hunting and wounding him, Thomas's enemies turn him into a fugitive. Fleeing England, he travels to Normandy, determined to rescue Will Skeat, his old commander from Harlequin. Finally Thomas leads his enemies back to Brittany, where he goes to discover an old love and where his pursuers at last trap their reluctant pilgrim. Vagabond is a vivid and realistic portrait of England at a time when the archer was king of Europe's battlefields.

An extraordinary and dramatic depiction of the legendary battle of Agincourt from the number one historical novelist Agincourt, fought on October 25th 1415, St Crispin's Day, is one of England's best-known battles, in part through the brilliant depiction of it in Shakespeare's Henry V, in part because it was a brilliant and unexpected English victory and in part because it was the first battle won by the use of the longbow — a weapon developed by the English which enabled them to dominate the European battlefields for the rest of the century. Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt is a vivid, breathtaking and meticulously well-researched account of this momentous battle and its aftermath. From the varying viewpoints of nobles, peasants, archers, and horsemen, Azincourt skilfully brings to life the hours of relentless fighting, the desperation of an army crippled by disease and the exceptional bravery of the English soldiers.

Harlequins are lost souls, so loved by the devil that he would not take them to hell, but left them to roam the earth. In French, the word is hellequin — the name given to the English archers who crossed the Channel to lay waste the towns and countryside. In the fourteenth century the English were just beginning to discover their national identity, and one of the strongest elements of this was the overwhelming success in battle of the English bowmen. England's archers crossed the Channel to lay a country to waste. Thomas of Hookton was one of those archers. When his village is sacked by French raiders, he escapes from his father's ambition to become a wild youth who delights in the opportunities which war offers — for fighting, for revenge and for friendship. But Thomas is hounded by his conscience. He has made a promise to God to retrieve a relic stolen in the raid from Hookton's church. The search for the relic leads him into a world where lovers become enemies, enemies become friends and always, somewhere beyond the horizon that is smeared with the smoke of fires set by the rampaging English army, a terrible enemy awaits him. That enemy would harness the power of Christendom's greatest relic — the grail itself. In this, the first book of a new series, Thomas begins the quest that will lead him through the fields of France, until at last the two armies face each other on a hillside near the village of Crecy.

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the number one bestseller Vagabond, this is the third instalment in Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series. In 1347 the English capture Calais and the war with France is suspended by a truce. But for Thomas of Hookton, the hero of Harlequin and Vagabond, there is no end to the fighting. He is pursuing the grail, the most sacred of Christendom's relics, and is sent to his ancestral homeland, Gascony, to engineer a confrontation with his deadliest enemy, Guy Vexille. Once in the south country Thomas becomes a raider, leading his archers in savage forays that will draw his enemy to his arrows. But then his fortunes change. Thomas becomes the hunted as his campaign is destroyed by the church. With only one companion, a girl condemned to burn as a heretic, Thomas goes to the valley of Astarac where he believes the grail was once hidden and might still be concealed, and there he plays a deadly game of hide and seek with an overwhelming enemy. Then, just as Thomas succeeds in meeting his enemy face to face, fate intervenes as the deadliest plague in the history of mankind erupts into Europe. What had been a landscape of castles, monasteries, vineyards and villages, becomes death's kingdom and the need for the grail, as a sign of God's favour, is more urgent than ever.

The fourth in the bestselling Alfred series from number one historical novelist, Bernard Cornwell. The year is 885, and England is at peace, divided between the Danish kingdom to the north and Alfred's kingdom of Wessex in the south. But trouble stirs, a dead man has risen and new Vikings have arrived to occupy London. It is a dangerous time, and it falls to Uhtred, half Saxon, half Dane, a man feared and respected the length and breadth of Britain, to expel the Viking raiders and take control of London for Alfred. His uncertain loyalties must now decide England's future. A gripping tale of love, rivalry and violence, Sword Song tells the story of England's making.

Sharpe is back, in this 21st entry in Bernard Cornwell's consistently brilliant historical adventure series. In the winter of 1811 the war against Napoleon seems lost. Spain has fallen except for Cádiz, now under siege. Richard Sharpe and his company are sent to break a bridge across the River Guadiana. What they find is that they have more than one enemy, including a murderous priest blackmailing the British ambassador with a pack of letters to his prostitute lover, a Spanish force more interested in appeasing the French than fighting them, and their own pompous Brigadier Moon. As he does so well, Cornwell brings the historical battle of Barrosa to life, in which an outnumbered British infantry refused to surrender.

The seventeenth Sharpe novel sees Sharpe returning from India to London to join the newly formed Green jackets. Sharpe, though a little more comfortable with his new officer rank, is sure that this new unit is of lower status, and that he has failed. His ship home is shipwrecked: he is captured by pirates but fighting free with a few companions, finds himself on a British Navy ship heading to join Nelson's fleet. And there, in October 1805, he finds himself involved in the great sea battle, and discovers new skills in fighting on sea.

The Reign of Terror has washed the streets of France blood-red. And in England a terrified aristocracy awaits the next blow. Secure in their wealth and power, the noble Lazenders remain safe from history's violent storm behind the walls of their opulent «little kingdom». But theirs is a house under siege. With the family's heir, Toby Lazender, away in revolution-torn France hunting the brutal murderers of the woman he loved, a secret cabal of powerful and dangerous assassins—the Fallen Angels—conspires to bring the chaos to England's shores by seizing the vast resources of Lazen Castle. And only one obstacle stands in their way: Toby's sister, Lady Campion Lazender. Caught in an ever-tightening net of conspiracy, Campion sees treachery all around her—even as she follows a mysterious horseman into a realm of fascination and desire. And in the clashing of nations—as traitors, spies, and their masters move furtively through the night—Campion's heart could be leading her to destruction... by the hand of one she trusts above all.

The civil war that is tearing England asunder in the year 1643 has not yet touched Dorcas Slythe, a secretly rebellious young Puritan woman living in the countryside south of London, who longs to escape the safe, pious tyranny of her father. The chance appears with the arrival of Toby Lazender, dashing scion of a powerful royalist family. It is he who renames her «Campion», awakening her to a bold, hitherto unknown passion... and to a mysterious and perilous destiny. With the discovery of an intricately wrought gold seal—one of four that, when joined, will reveal a great secret and uncover an enormous fortune—Campion's quest begins. Love, riches, and redemption await her at the end of her perilous adventure. Or death.

In the cobbled streets outside Newgate Prison, the common and desperate of London gather regularly to enjoy the spectacle of human necks broken at the end of a hangman's rope. For Rider Sandman, newly returned from the Napoleonic Wars, it is not grim entertainment that draws him here, but a mission to prove the guilt or innocence of a condemned prisoner — a duty that leads Sandman from the hellish bowels of Newgate to the scented drawing rooms of the ruthless and powerful, and into the darkest shadows of the filthy, bustling city, in search of the truth.

A story of love, war, loyalty and betrayal, «Excalibur» begins with the failure of Lancelot's rebellion and the ruin of Arthur's marriage to Guinevere. The Saxons, sensing the disunity of the Britons, seize the chance to destroy Arthur. The climax of the war comes with the legendary triumph at Mount Badon, and Arthur's great victory. But the promises he made then come back to haunt him after the years of peace and glory.

The second book in a trilogy telling the story of Arthur. After one last battle, Arthur will rule a peaceful land. But, unlike Merlin, Arthur has forgotten the Gods, who thrive on chaos. Arthur's plans are thrown into turmoil, as the search for the 13 sacred objects to restore the Gods begins.

There was snow when Arthur's tale began. It was a lifetime ago, in the last year of High King Uther's reign... However you count the years it was long ago, once upon a time, in a land called Britain, and I was there. Derfel, once a captain in Arthur's warband, recalls the dramatic days of wilful Guinevere, arrogant Lancelot, abstracted Merlin and intolerant Bishop Sansum, vying for mastery amid faction and bitter chaos. But, above all he tells the story of Arthur, royal bastard, unwise lover and inspired warlord, the only man who can hold Uther's throne for its infant heir and unite Britain's squabbling kingdoms against the enemy at their gates. Evoking the human realities behind the legends of romance and chivalry, Bernard Cornwell weaves a brutal, magnificent epic of war and love, magic and politics, as the old gods retreat before the spread of Christianity, and the Saxon invaders reach deeper into the heart of Britain...