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
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.
Every day is ordinary, until it isn't.
We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.
Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.
Wyrd bith ful araed (Fate is inexorable).
Our ancestors took this land. They took it and made it and held it. We do not give up what our ancestors gave us. They came across the sea and they fought here, and they built here and they're buried here. This is our land, mixed with our blood, strengthened with our bone. Ours!
Mind you, even in places where I'm much better known, I walk in anonymity, mainly because folks know authors' names, but not their faces.
I still have to crack the French market, though that isn't entirely surprising considering that the Sharpe novels are endless tales of French defeat.
I'd like to cut it down to three books in two years instead of two a year - but whether that'll happen I don't know.
It's better than 9 to 5 because I'm my own boss so I can take off when I want to, and the dress code is non-existent and the commute is terrific.
Agents will read unpublished work because they might make money, and that's their job. It isn't mine.
Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.