He relocated to the United States in 1980 after marrying an American. He then joined Thames Television as editor of Thames News. He then joined BBC's Nationwide and was promoted to become head of current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland. He attempted to enlist in the British armed services at least three times but was rejected on the grounds of myopia.

After he left them, he changed his name to his birth mother's maiden name, Cornwell.Ĭornwell was sent away to Monkton Combe School, attended the University of London, and after graduating, worked as a teacher. He was adopted and brought up in Essex by the Wiggins family, who were members of the Peculiar People, a strict Protestant sect who banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine. His father was a Canadian airman, and his mother, who was English, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. This thrilling adventure-based on existing records of Bernard Cornwell’s ancestors-depicts a time when law and order were ripped violently apart by a pagan assault on Christian England, an assault that came very close to destroying England.Ĭornwell was born in London in 1944. Above all, though, he wishes to recover his father’s land, the enchanting fort of Bebbanburg by the wild northern sea. By now he is a young man, in love, trained to fight and ready to take his place in the dreaded shield wall. He certainly has no love for Alfred, whom he considers a pious weakling and no match for Viking savagery, yet when Alfred unexpectedly defeats the Danes and the Danes themselves turn on Uhtred, he is finally forced to choose sides. The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed nobleman, who is captured as a child by the Danes and then raised by them so that, by the time the Northmen begin their assault on Wessex (Alfred’s kingdom and the last territory in English hands) Uhtred almost thinks of himself as a Dane. This is the story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated the Danish Vikings who had invaded and occupied three of England’s four kingdoms.

The last kingdom by bernard cornwell