Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwall

Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwall --- 352 pages, including Acknowledgements, Bibliography and Index

June 18, 2015 will be the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, that watershed event in British and European history, when the Duke of Wellington and his Prussian ally, Marshall von Blücher, defeated Napoleon's comeback bid. 

Cornwall, a noted British author of military historical fiction, puts his formidable writing skills to the task of organizing a coherent account of one of the most complicated battles on record; complicated by the tactics and confusions that concentrated an enormous number of combatants into a constricted and difficult terrain. One survivor of that hellish day later wrote that he began to think that no one on either side would live to know who had prevailed.

Click HERE to read a review from the Spectator.
Click HERE to read a review from the Economist.

The Empty Throne by Bernard Cornwall

The Empty Throne: A Novel by Bernard Cornwall --- 296 pages

The eighth book in Cornwall's Saxon Tales series continues to look at Anglo-Saxon Britain through the eyes of the pagan lord Uhtred of  Bebbanburg, warlord in the service of Alfred of Wessex and his dream of a united Saxon kingdom of Englaland.

Alfred is now dead and his son Edward rules Wessex, while his daughter AEthelflaed was wed to AEthelred of Mercia to secure the alliance of Mercia to Wessex. While Edward is an indolent king, content to allow his powerful father-in-law, AEthelhelm, to rule in his name, AEthelflaed has endeared herself to her Mercian subjects by her piety, her canny leadership, and her success in fending off Viking raiders. In this last AEthelflaed is ably assisted by Uhtred, the leader of her warriors and her sometime lover.

Now AEthelflaed's dispised husband, AEthelred, is dying with no direct male heir to succeed him, Ambitious men are vying for his throne, ignoring the Viking threat hanging over Mercia. And Uhtred, suffering from a wound that refuses to heal, seeks to persuade the Mercian witan to do the unthinkable and accept AEthelflaed --- a woman! --- as their ruler.

Historical fiction with the blood and mud immediacy that makes Cornwall of master of the genre. The same British television company that produces Downton Abbey is now filming Cornwall's The Last Kingdom, the first book of the Saxon Tales.  Let's hope it's as good as  the television series based on Cornwall's Richard Sharpe, which catapulted Sean Bean to fame and fortune in the 1990s as the British rifleman who against all odds rises through the ranks during the Napoleonic Wars.

Click HERE to watch the trailer for The Empty Throne.

Click HERE to read the Kirkus review.

Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell

Vagabond: The Grail Quest Series, Volume II by Bernard Cornwell - 405 pages

In the second volume in Cornwall's series about the Hundred Years War, Thomas of Hookton is sent back to England to follow the tenuous clues linking his father to the mystery of the Holy Grail. On his way to speak to an elderly monk in Durham who once knew Thomas' father, he is drawn into the battle to defend the city from an invading Scots army. The Scots King, David Bruce, allied with the French King Philip by their shared antipathy for the English, has agreed to strike England from the north while the English king is preoccupied with his siege of Calais.

But the northern English lords, left to guard the border against just such a contingency, hastily assemble in defense of Durham. Thomas, alternating between doubt and fear that there is any truth to this tale of his father's connection with the Grail, joins the other archers defending Durham in a bloody but ultimately successful battle to repulse the Scots. The Scots King is taken along with several of his nobles, a rich source of ransom for their English captors.

But while Thomas was embroiled in the battle, a sinister Dominican priest and the mysterious Harlequin, revealed to be Thomas' cousin, Guy de Vexille, have silenced the monk and murdered two of Thomas' companions. Now Thomas, and a new and unlikely companion with his own losses to avenge, set out to track down their enemies and rescue Christendom's holiest relic. Their quest leads them back to Hookton, where Thomas finds his father had left him a bequest, a book that seems to confirm the Grail's existence. But do these strange tales written by Thomas' father provide some kind of cryptic clues to where it lies hidden?  When Thomas seeks help in deciphering these clues he falls into the hands of the Dominican and the Inquisition. Broken by the torture, Thomas is near death when his friends ransom him from the Inquisitor. The price of his freedom is his father's book.

Thomas finds himself back in La Roche-Derrien, slowly recuperating from his wounds, both physical and mental. Then Philip of Blois, Duke of Brittany, launches his campaign to drive the English occupation forces out of Brittany. Philip believes he has found a strategy to neutralize the English longbows in battle. He will begin by besieging the English garrison at La Roche-Derrien. Once again Thomas prepares to meet his enemies in battle.