Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell (born 23 February 1944 in London) is a British writer of historical fiction. Adopted as a baby and raised in Essex by members of the Peculiar People, a pacifist sect, he read history at University College London and worked in television for the BBC and Thames News before turning to novels. He is best known for Sharpe, a sequence of twenty-three novels begun in 1981 and set during the Napoleonic Wars, and for The Saxon Stories (2004-2020, thirteen books), adapted for television as The Last Kingdom by the BBC and Netflix. His other series include The Starbuck Chronicles (1993-1996), The Warlord Chronicles (1995-1997) and The Grail Quest (2000-2012). He was appointed OBE in 2006.