Hiya - I have a question, but I hope you don't mind if I put down some thoughts first... I have greatly enjoyed reading your books, thank you! My absolute favourite, like yours I believe, was The Warlord Trilogy. Derfel The Mighty is a character who will always live in my memory. His swordfight with Liofa is a passage I still read regularly. The Arthur series was also wonderful and I am now half way through the Sharpe books, with the Saxon series to follow. I am keeping all of your books that I have read and my hope is that if and when I can get my 3 boys to eventually turn to reading, I will turn them to you! I hope you don't mind me saying, but I found Stonehenge a little heavy going, and I'm not in mind to read the Starbuck Chronicles, although when I run out of Sharpe and have finished the Saxon series I may well turn the the Civil War after all!
A period that I find fascinating is in and around the Battle of Hastings...did we really lose most of the country to French ownership and is that still the case I wonder? With all of Britain's rich history to choose from I won't even begin to make a suggestion for you! So...I must stop rambling even though I have so much more to say, herewith my question:
Question - I have just finished Sharpe's Fortress and whilst I knew Sharpe would find a way into Gawilghur, I was a little disappointed in the way he did so. Am I not right in thinking that the meticulous Dodd surveyed the route to the inner fortress every day looking for weaknesses and possible flaws? And ho found none? I just thought it was a little pat that Sharpe was able to spy a poorly guarded climbing opportunity within just a few seconds of looking...in fact, with not many pages left and the inner fort still to be overcome I knew it had to be something dramatic! And also something different to his heroics in Seringapatam in Sharpe's Tiger. So there's my question of sorts...should Dodd have noticed this weakness and allowed for it in the long days leading up to the attack? Or in doing so, would the story have become too difficult to tell? Anyway, onto Trafalger we go! All the best Nick Stern
We lost it to Norman ownership, which is quite different, and led to the quarrel between the kings of England and France as to which was the overlord of Normandy, and thus to the Hundred Years War. Permanently? Well, the Norman aristocracy stayed, but it all got thrown into the melting pot eventually!
Sharpe did what the real guys did - I didn't make the route up! So the real defenders, like Dodd, despite their preparations, didn't foresee that route.