I have just finished the three Saxon stories end on in ten days. I have not been so keen since reading all the Patrick O'Brien novels in sequence when laid up with a leg in plaster. I am pleased to see that you actually reply to fan mail , which I think was pretty unlikely in O'Brien's case. As I suspected many of the people who seem to contact you are men, and I wonder how many seventy year old women enjoy your books. I am gob-smacked by your ingenuity and sheer graft; you don't just research one period and stick to it. Thus I venture a few comments and questions. As you have evidently studied the psychology of fighting men in various periods, but also have to write for a modern audience, I am curious about your amoral, violently homicidal, Uhtred as hero figure. As a girl I took huge interest in arms and armour, siege engines and battle tactics, and read about heroes skewering each other in the Iliad, Norse and Icelandic sagas, Froissart, Mary Renault and C.S. Forester. Now I perceive the pure horror of hand to hand fighting and wonder how average men coped with this, let alone women. Have you good evidence that the pagan Danes enjoyed torturing their enemies slowly to death or do you just make it up, and does your readership ever comment on the frequent bloodbaths? What with all the rape and pillage and not much in the way of careful child rearing, I suppose murderous psychopaths were ten a penny or is it all about warrior culture? Your complex Alfred is a more interesting character and pretty convincing given the evidence. I also recall very small scenes better than battles: when the marshwoman on Athelney hopes vainly that the armed man will retrieve her lost children and Father Pyrlig instructing a slave how to cook cheesy scrambled eggs.
Another question is how you can perform the amazing genealogical feat of tracing your ancestry back to eleventh century Bamburgh? I hail you as a fellow Bernician, as almost everybody with my surname comes from the Lothians. I see myself as a reasonably tough genetic mix of Pict, Scot and Norse ,adding in my mother from Ulster with the nordic name of Kell. If my ancestors had not been tough, I would not be here - and neither would you, but the best most of us can do is go back a couple of hundred years. I shall make a point of stopping at Bamburgh this year, on my way north as I have intended to do for years but always swept past in train, coach or car. I do hope you visited my local Saxon sites of West Stow and Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, though they are from the pagan period. Last question - Thyra and the dogs. Frankly this seems OTT. Where did you get the idea? I presume you are keeping Uhtred alive until the Battle of Brunanburgh, which seems a good point to end. I shall be interested to hear how he will age in a period when few people did. Alison Fairgrieve