Dear Mr Cornwell, I would like to thank you for all the enjoyment i have reading your books and seeing Sean Bean thrashing about on screen as Sharpe. It was the TV series that got me hooked on your work, though to my shame i don't think i've managed to read a Sharpe novel that was dramatised in the series... but i will. I have been enthralled by your Saxon stories and look forward eagerly to the next one but since finishing Lords of The North i gave the Arthur books a bash. BRILLIANT!!! I was up till all hours on a work night no less getting to the end of Enemy of God (only the sadly departed David Gemmell's Druss has kept me up as late) and now i'm frantically trying to get hold of a copy of Excalibur. Did you find it harder or easier to write about a period in history where there is little factual background to go on like the Arthur books and have you ever considered writing further back in history/pre-history or pure fantasy? Thank you, Dave.
I'll never write pure fantasy, not because I dislike it, but it isn't what I'd choose to read and we write what we want to read. In some ways it's easier to write about ill-recorded periods because, obviously, there's more room to make things up. But then, in well-recorded history, you often find ready-made stories that just need shaping - so I can't say I have a preference either way. I don't have any plans to go back deep into pre-history, not at the moment, but in a few years? who knows?