Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell, OBEis an English author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. Cornwell has written historical novels primarily of English history in five series and one series of contemporary thriller novels. A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how the novel matches or differs from history, for the re-telling, and what you might see at the modern site of...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 February 1944
Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.
At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold... doesn't bear thinking about, but I suppose we'd have made it work somehow.
Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
A man does not see where he treads in battle, for he is watching the enemy...
I'm fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.
I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.
But when you have order, you don't need Gods. When everything is well ordered and disciplined then nothing is unexpected. If you understand everything,' I said carefully, 'then there's no room left for magic. It's only when you're lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that's why they like us to live in chaos.
Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man.
You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.
Because there could not be peace, not while two tribes shared one land. One tribe must win. Even the nailed god cannot change that truth. And I was a warrior, and in a world at war the warrior must be cruel.
You know what circumcision is, Private?
We don't build,' I said to my son, 'we just destroy.
So far it's 43 books in 25 years.