The new historical novel set in Elizabethan England by Bernard Cornwell now has a cover – two covers in fact – one for the UK and one for the US. You can pre-order Fools and Mortals here if you’re interested.
And the US Cover
The new historical novel set in Elizabethan England by Bernard Cornwell now has a cover – two covers in fact – one for the UK and one for the US. You can pre-order Fools and Mortals here if you’re interested.
And the US Cover
I’m a big fan of historical fiction (as you might guess from the stories that I write and the content of this blog!) So I was interested to hear that there will be a new Bernard Cornwell book later in this year – and one that’s not part of his normal series – or on a subject that he would normally write about.
I really enjoy Cornwell’s action stories–he writes well and creates strong stories. You could argue that the books are a bit formulaic after a while, but they’re good reads nevertheless.
His latest is set in Elizabethan England and follows the life of one Richard Shakespeare – it’s not out until October and there’s not a great deal of information on it – not even a cover image at the moment – but it sounds intriguing – probably the most notable difference from most of his work is that it does not involve military matters.
Here’s what I have from the Amazon website:
A dramatic new departure for international bestselling author Bernard Cornwell, FOOLS AND MORTALS takes us into the heart of the Elizabethan era, long one of his favourite periods of British history.
Fools and Mortals follows the young Richard Shakespeare, an actor struggling to make his way in a company dominated by his estranged older brother, William. As the growth of theatre blooms, their rivalry – and that of the playhouses, playwrights and actors vying for acclaim and glory – propels a high-stakes story of conflict and betrayal.
And the link to it on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for pre-orders.
Although this is the eighth book in the series of Sharpe book – going in chronological order, Sharpe’s Eagle has the distinction of being Bernard Cornwell’s first Sharpe book. He went back and filled in much of the history of Richard Sharpe at a later date – his time in India for instance which is referred to in this book.
This book is also of note as it’s the only place where Sharpe’s hair is described as being black – Cornwell didn’t mention his hair colour again in other books in the series, which is a good thing given Sean Bean is blond!
Well enough of the anecdotes about the book. What’s it about and is it any good? The story covers the Talavera campaign, during which the British army under Wellington entered Spain with the intention of capturing Madrid supported by the Spanish army. The story begins in Portugal with Sharpe’s company of riflemen being attached to a new regiment, the fictional South Essex commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson. The Colonel is proud and incompetent and he and one of his officers, Lieutenant Christian Gibbons are the main villains of the story. Gibbons is accompanied by a beautiful Portuguese noblewoman, Josefina Lacosta. The South Essex has the job of seizing a bridge on the line of march of the British army with the cooperation of a Spanish regiment. Due to the incompetence of both the Spanish and Simmerson the regiment is nearly destroyed by French dragoons and cannon. But Sharpe disobeys orders and manages to save most of the regiment from destruction. Not before the South Essex loses its King’s Colour. One of Sharpe’s friends – an officer of the South Essex dies, and Sharpe tells the dying man that he will capture a French regimental Eagle in order to take revenge for the loss of the King’s Colour. Thus the stage is set for the rest of the book.
The British army makes its way under Wellington to Talavera. Most of the rest of the action is the march to the city and the battle itself. There is a good deal of conflict between Sharpe, Simmerson and Gibbon – and with Gibbon Josefina is the main subject of that conflict – the love interest for the book!
I won’t say anything more about the story in case readers of this post haven’t read it.
So what did I think of it? I really enjoyed it. I’ve read other Sharpe books before and other novels by Cornwell, so I was familiar with the style and content of his work – and it didn’t disappoint. There’s plenty of action to keep you turning the pages, but although he’s sometimes accused of being a bit lightweight on history, I found that there was plenty of historical background and content in the book to keep me interested. The characters are well defined too – although some are a bit stereotyped in a way – you can see that they fulfil a function in the story for instance – such as Major Hogan who’s there as a kindly older father figure who tries to help Sharpe. But the characters work well and Cornwell has a knack of bringing them to life and making you believe in them.
Verdict? Heartily recommended!
If you want to support my blog then please consider buying a copy of Sharpe’s Eagle (or anything else) by clicking on the Amazon links below.
Herewith, some thoughts on writing techniques of Bernard Cornwell following reading 1356.
This is a case of me making some fairly random observations that are important to me as a writer of historical fiction. If you are not a writer, then you might find them a bit uninteresting. If the thoughts are relevant to you, then you might also find them a bit obvious – “Well of course he does that, doesn’t he!”
So that’s it – just some of my thoughts. 1356 like all of Bernard Cornwell’s books is good fun for the reader, but also provides some good pointers for writers. There’s the whole character arc, plotting question as well – I’m sure it does that well, but I hvaen’t had a chance to study how that works, but my main takeaways were the points about historical detail and making minor characters vivid.
Got to the end of Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell today. It was a good read, although I found that his efforts to explain certain things about this iconic battle in English history did obscure the storytelling – he seemed to be trying a bit too hard to show how certain things happen – i.e. this is how such a small English army beat such a big French one. A good read, but I wonder if it could have been better – a bit more naturally told somehow?
In my last post about Azincourt
I mentioned an historical inaccuracy regarding the Bishop of Oxford. Well right at the end I spotted another one – this time there is a priest who offers to say two masses in one day – however, a priest is only ever allowed to say one mass a day except in special circumstances.
I guess I shouldn’t be too picky though – I am sure my own work contains just as many mistakes, but these two did jump out at me!
I am currently reading Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell and absolutely loving it. Azincourt is a nice easy and pleasurable page-turner told in the usual style of Bernard Cornwell – the historical content is fairly light and the characters are very immediate, not to complex but with enough empathy to keep the reader interested in the story.
And of course its about the great battle of Agincourt (or Azincourt) during the Hundred Years War, a battle that I have read a fair bit about and one that I have some quite strong opinions on – i.e. that the contribution of our archers wasn’t as key as some people like to make out – the men-at-arms and the mud were the key players in my opinion. So I wanted to see how Bernard Cornwell treated the portrayal of the battle. At the moment I am reading his depiction of the siege of Harfleur, which he does very well – effectively a medieval siege was like trench warfare and that is well depicted in Azincourt.
There was one jarring moment of disappointment and surprise for me though earlier in the book. A priest is describing his time at Oxford University and how he used to visit a brothel there – all fine and accurate so far. In fact this priest visited the brothel so often that he became a regular acquaintance of the Bishop of Oxford, who was also a regular customer of the same brothel.
But … there was no Bishop of Oxford. No bishop existed in Oxford until the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century. Oxford was part of the huge diocese of Lincoln at the time. When I read this passage in Azincourt it was one of those moments where I simply had to put down the book and do a fact check. Having done a fair bit of research on the University of Oxford for my novel Hell has its Demons, I thought it odd that I hadn’t come across a Bishop of Oxford – such a figure would have held great sway over the interaction of the town and the University I thought – instead the Chancellor of the University was probably the most important clerk around time at this point.
Lessons to be learnt? Even the best novelists make mistakes, and always check your facts even if they seem self-evident – i.e. that a place as prominent as Oxford would be assured to have a Bishop.
Some of the top stories and most interesting blog posts on Medieval History and Medieval Historical Fiction in the past week or so:
Medieval Bookworm reviews Bernard Cornwell’s Death of Kings
Medievalists.net discusses evidence for Scottish Medieval Football – although is this any real surprise? Football was around for a long time in the Middle Ages.
Medievalists.net also has news that the British Library launches new Medieval and Renaissance images app
About.com tells us about the Viking Ship Burial Discovered in Scotland
ABC News and many other news sites tell about how a father forced his daughter to take part in a medieval duel
Live Science has news of how Computers are helping to piece together Medieval scrolls found in a Cairo synagogue
Gamershell.com has news about an interesting MMO game set in the Middle Ages. Goldon Age is currently in Closed Beta
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As you may have realised if you occasionally read this blog, I am really into historical fiction and historical fantasy fiction, and also Alternate History as well. I always find it surprising that there are few outlets for discussion of historical fiction compared to science fiction and the various aspects of fantasy fiction. In particular short stories seem to be very badly served. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps historical fiction is regarded as part of the mainstream, either at the literary level with Booker Prize winners such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, or at the more mass market mainstream level with the likes of Bernard Cornwell. But I always think of historical fiction as genre writing first and foremost. Especially when writers start to bend history and imagine what might have been.
I thought it might be a good idea therefore to experiment with the creation of a community of readers and aspiring writers in historical fiction. So I have created a Facebook page to facilitate discussion and the spreading of news. My plan is to allow users to post their own news and even post links to their own historical short stories wherever these maybe located. At some point I am thinking of perhaps setting up a regular magazine to publish historical short stories, reviews and features, but that maybe some way down the line yet.
Please let me know what you think of the page and the idea behind it, either here or over at Facebook.