On this episode of News World.

One of my all time favorite authors is Bernard Cornwell.

His best selling novels of historical fiction have kept me entertained and educated for years.

The Wall three Journal calls in quote, the most prolific and successful historical novelist in the world today, and that is quite complent.

Now he's joined me today to discuss his latest book, Sharp Storm, set near eighteen thirteen on a battlefield in France.

I've read it.

I highly recommend it, but I'm not going to let him get away.

It's just talking about that Chwis.

He's such an interesting person and his background is so cool.

Bernard, thank you so much much for joining me.

Well, thank you for inviting me.

You said your writing career started almost by accident.

Tell us about that, because it's kind of amazing that you are this successful by accident.

Well, it was an accident.

I think I always wanted to write novels, but many many people have that wish and I really couldn't see it happening.

And I had a perfectly good job.

I was a producer for BBC Television working in Northern Ireland, and purely by chance, I met an American, a woman who I saw getting out of an elevator in Edinburgh, and I looked at my reporter and said, I'm going to marry that one.

But it took me eighteen months, and Judy, for very good reasons, family reasons, couldn't live in Britain.

So I said, well, I'll have to go to America.

When I got to the United States, I found it was quite difficult to get a work permit.

They were not giving them away.

So I said to her, don't worry, darling, I'll write a book.

And that was forty five years ago.

I'm now an American citizen, thankfully, and I've been writing books ever since.

And we're still married.

What is it you saw in that instant the legend decide that you had to marry her.

Well, I'm sure she'd be mad at me for saying it, but very good legs.

If it's the truth, You and I both believe that that's a useful thing to start with.

We're in agreements on that, mister speaker.

Obviously, beyond the legs, there was a lot that was pretty endurable of you guys are still hanging out together this many years later.

Oh, we're still hanging out together.

Yes, I have forgotten.

I should know this.

What was your first novel?

The first novel was called Sharp's Eagle, which was set in eighteen o eight and the Battle of Talavera.

And I think there are now twenty five Sharp novels.

I think that's the right number, which follow him now from his early career in India Writes through to the Back of Waterloo.

I love the early books when he's in India.

And I'm a little surprised that you kind of start not quite in the middle, but almost in the middle.

So how did that come to him?

What is there that head you sitting around New Jersey going gee, I think I'll write about Taliberra Well.

I think I'd always known what book I wanted to write.

I've often thought that writing itself is very easy.

Writing well is difficult, but knowing what to write about is the most difficult thing of all.

And as I'm sure you know, there were those great novels by CS Forester about Hornblower, and it always amazed me that there were several guys writing about the British Navy in its fight against Napodium, but nobody was doing the same for the army.

And I thought that was a gap on the bookshelf.

So for years I looked for books that told the story of Wellington's army, and I couldn't find them.

And eventually this little light went off in my head, and I thought, what if nobody else is doing it, why don't you do it?

And That's what I've been doing for forty five years now.

Well, I have to tell you, by the way, Jim mattis the Marine Force Star General Secretary of Defense.

We were at dinner one night and he said he had never understood Waterloo until he read your version, which I thought was quite a compliment.

It's a huge compliment.

I shall treasure it.

I had spent a lot of time.

Right after I won the speakership.

I spent several months studying Wellington because I thought the Peninsular campaign of fighting out numbered and winning was probably the closest thing to my speakership, and I wanted to learn from Wellington.

So I read a lot of biographies and things, and he is astonishing.

But then you bring both the war and you bring sharp of course, but you also bring Wellington to life in a way that a lot of people find very difficult.

Well he was I think He was a difficult man.

He once said it himself.

I have no small talk, and he was awkward, certainly in conversation.

He was quite cold.

In fact.

I think he was a very emotional man, but he hid his emotions very well.

And he was, of course quite brilliant.

He'd served in every rank in the army, from lieutenant upwards.

He understood the processes of fighting, and he especially understood logistics.

I feel I know him remarkably well because I've been writing about him for so long.

I also suspect he would dislike me intensely.

He once said he could not bear authors, and he refused to talk to authors.

I mean after the Battle of Waterloo.

In his long career, he was often questioned about it, especially about the Waterloo campaign, and he refused to talk about it.

The only way to get him to open up was to present him with a very young, beautiful woman, and then he would talk.

He was very susceptible to women, which I like about him.

And the best stories about Wellington all come from what you told other women.

You remind me by the way Churchill, as a very impetuous and arrogant young man, decides to write The River War about the Battle of Omdermen in the book praises Kitchener, who is the general in charge of the whole campaign.

Kitchener's totally pissed off at him, because Kitchener's attitude is, who are you as a junior officer?

Whether you tell me you like what I did or you don't like what I did, you have no right to have an opinion.

I think that he and Wellington would probably have agreed on that.

I'm sure they would have agreed absolutely.

Yes.

As you know, not only am I a huge fan of what you have done for Wellington and for Sharp, but I am an even bigger fan for what you have done for Ughtred and for the Last Kingdom.

What I think is probably the best explanation of Alfred that I have ever seen, capturing the strangely weak and yet very strong person who becomes the foundation for what they later on will call England.

You've done some secondary books, but you have these two series that are astonishing.

How do you manage to juggle two totally different storylines, two totally different eras, and yet both of them come off I think just as remarkably good.

Well, I suppose the first storyline is Sharp and the Napoleonic Wars.

And I've been an enthusiast for looking at the Napoleonic Wars ever since I was a kid.

Ughtred and the Saxon stories came much later, and that was really because I think living in America, and I've become very fond of America, and like all Americans, I celebrate July the fourth, and I realized that I had a very very idea where the United States came from.

It's birth moment, if you like.

And then I thought, well, I know nothing about where England came from.

I mean, England doesn't have a birth moment.

There's no celebration in England of a day to celebrate England itself.

And although I had a very good education in Britain, it didn't cover that.

So I set out to discover it for myself.

And that's really the story of Ughtred.

Ughtred, if you like, parallels the creation of England.

And in July next year we'll celebrate America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday.

England's birthday, I suppose, is the year nine three seven, at a terrible battle called the Battle of Brunenburgh.

We don't really know too much about what happened there.

But that was the birth moment at this battle, and maybe I'll celebrate it privately next October.

I'd have to subtract nine three seven from twenty twenty six, and I can't do that in my head.

I'll leave that to cleverer people.

In that particular battle, which, as you point out, we have only very limited archaeological knowledge, but you have a clear sense that the English side, by keeping part of its forces in reserve and bringing them in from the flank at the right moment, were decisive and shattering the Allied armies that were opposed to England.

Is that a novelistic adventure or is there some reason to believe it may have happened like that?

No reason to believe it at all.

I had to make it up.

For hundreds of years, over a thousand years, nobody even knew where the battle was fought.

Archaeologists discovered that about five years ago.

One of the joys of being an historical novelist is you can make things up.

I can't make up anything about the Battle of Waterloo.

It's too well recorded.

I mean, I can't invent a southern flank attack, which in fact was what Wellington was most worried about.

But when it came to Brunenburgh, other than the fact that the two armies met and that it was a disaster for the enemy, we don't know anything really, so I just make it up as I go along.

When you think about Wellington and his capacity to do things in the whole nature of the British Army of that period, how much do you think would Wellington learn fighting in India shaped and equipped him to operate in a backward region like Portugal.

I think he learned confidence.

I think that was the main thing.

At the huge Battle of Essay, which was his biggest victory in India, he took huge risks and those risks paid off.

I mean he was often reviled by the French as merely a defensive general, and because he was a brilliant defensive general, he proved that at Waterloo.

But he was also capable of very very bold attacks, and his attack at a Say was particularly brave and bold.

He was outnumbered again, but he outflanked the enemy and he destroyed the enemy.

And I think he came away from India convinced that he could actually operate as a commander of an army, and that has indeed proved true.

But much later in his life he was asked once again by a woman, what are you most proud of in your career?

And he answered with one word, assay, which is a story I tell in Sharp's Triumph.

And he was simply proud of it because it was a huge risk and enormous risk, and it paid off.

And he proved it again at battles like Salamanca, where again he was an offensive battle, but it was a brilliant battle in many ways.

People call it Salamanca Wellington's masterpiece, And as much as a horrible slaughter like Salamanca can be a masterpiece, it was a masterpiece of generalship.

So I think what he learned in India is to take heed of his own impulses, to follow them, and to have confidence in them.

If I remember Correickly, Salamanca is the battle where he's watching the battlefield eating a chicken leg and suddenly says, the French general has made a huge mistake, throws away the chicken leg and goes out of the battle.

That's exactly right.

He's watching the French from a hilltop.

He sees them making this mistake, which is basically marching far off to his right and there left, and he says to his friend Aliva, the Spanish liaison officer Marmont apadu, Marmont is lost.

He then gallops three miles to his right flank and orders the attack by the third division, which rolls the French up and again it was risky.

In many ways, it's astonishing, but it was incredibly effective.

I never thought much about coming out of the peninsula and into southern France.

But in fact, as you may clear in several of your novels, there was a big deal and was actually a very real campaign in its own right.

It was.

And when Wellington crossed the Pyrenees and marches into France, he is the only enemy army actually on French soil, and Napoleon wanted to get rid of him, so he sent big reinforcements to Marshall Sioux, who was his opponent there.

And it was a very difficult campaign for Wellington because he's hedged in by rivers and faced with an enormous fortress city, the city of Bayonne, And in many ways his campaign following the crossing of the Pyrenees is quite brilliant, and of course it leads in the end to Britain occupying everything from Bordeaux down to the French border.

That by that time the Austrians, the Prussians and the Russians were in northern France, and the situation became impossible for Napoleon.

Although Napoleon's own campaign of eighteen fourteen is also a masterpiece.

With very small forces, he stymied his major enemies in the north, but that left Wellington free in the south.

There seems to be an enormous gap in the capabilities of the French generals without Napoleon, they're pretty consistently unable to cope with Wellington.

Yes, that's true, and Wellington himself explained it by saying that French logistics, French organization was like a very very fine harness on a horse.

It was beautifully constructed, a beautiful he said.

If it breaks, it takes forever to mend.

He says, I just tie ropes to make a harness, and if something breaks, I tie a knot and keep going.

And that is in many ways true.

And of course this adds to the drama of Waterloo, because on the eve of Waterloo Napoleon is entirely confident of victory.

And these generals who have faced Wellington have been beaten by Wellington and say, no, no, you've got to be cautious.

This man is good.

And he looks at them scornfully and says, you only say that because he's beaten you.

I tell you I can beat him and will beat him.

And that is, I really think part of the drama, because you're right.

Napoleon was a genius of war, but he was faced by another one.

And it was like the Wimbledon final.

These two greatest players in the world have never met before and they meet at the final, and thank goodness, Wellington won.

I went back recently and reread you Are, a description of the novel involving Waterlooon.

It is really a close run things.

Willington said, it was a close run thing.

And again, the drama of the battle is it began at about eleven o'clock in the morning, it's still going at eight thirty at night, and really at eight o'clock it would be impossible to say who is going to win this.

And then finally Napoleon throws in his elite troops in the final attack.

The attack of the Imperial Guard up against Wellington's weakened right wing, and you have this final clash and it all happens very suddenly.

An immediate result happens when the Imperial Guard is defeated and the rest of the army just panic and run.

It is an incredibly dramatic moment, one of the most dramatic moments in warfare.

Because you recognize the nature of southern France.

You really give us a sense of how important it was to be able to have engineering and to be able to figure out both how to keep the other side of the Fresh off balance and how to build crossing so rapidly that you can get the army because it's in constant danger of being caught with half of it on the north side and half of it on the south side and being defeated.

In detail, well, that really was the story of that campaign.

And again Wellington's understanding of the problems is in many ways the key to solving them.

And he had great faith in his engineers, who were very, very, very efficient, and he depends for his survival on these pontoon bridges that his engineers construct, and when the pontoon bridges fail, he's in Trouble.

But really I think the masterpiece and it's actually not in Sharp Storm, although I think you learn all about it if you read the novel.

Was the crossing of the river Adure when he crossed it at its estuary, the widest point the river, and an almost impossible place to build a bridge because it was subject to Atlantic storms.

And yet the engineers managed to throw a bridge over in less than twenty four hours, and Wellington crosses, and that's out flanks Marshall Soux.

Yet again, you.

Any care that you actually wanted Sharp to be there, but it didn't fit the timeline because of Sharpe siege.

Yes, this is called disorganization.

On my part, I really thought the climax of the book would be the building of the great bridge over the river at Dure, and then suddenly realized, when I was halfway through the book that I'd already had Sharp somewhere else when that happened, so I couldn't tell it, which forced me to come up with another ending for the book, which in the end I rather liked.

When Sharp is sent to make a reconnaissance of the northern Bank, I have absolutely no evidence of such a reconnaissance.

Took place, but I can't believe it didn't, so I just made it up.

I mean, I think it's very likely that whether Sharp did it or somebody else did it, the willing to want to know what was there.

Oh yes, I agree with you, and I take great joy in your agreements.

One of your most interesting characters in this book is Sir Nathaniel Peacock, who is a real figure.

It's kind of unkind to him to set him up for ridicule, but apparently it was real.

Oh yes, he was real.

I mean one of the first persons who ever read the book said you can't get away with this, and I hadn't written the historical note by that time.

He said, one, the name is ridiculous, and two, no one can be that pompous and that stupid.

And I pointed out that in fact, the man existed, and Sir Nathaniel was, if you like, a cowboy caricature of the arrogant British officer who is born too rich, too privileged, and thinks he knows it all and on the whole.

Wellington had managed to get rid of most men like that, but at the last minute, Sir Nathaniel is inflicted on the army.

And he makes a perfect character for Sharp to dislike, because Sharp because he's the very opposite of a pompous, arrogant, privileged officer.

And I went to a spoiler and say, what happens to Snathaniel in the book, But it's all true.

It happened more or less exactly as it's described in the book.

You have several of those scattered through the book that people who are out of touch with reality, taken up with their own aristocracy, and dangerous to the army, and yet favored by the army headquarters back in London.

Which was due to their social position and the contacts they had.

And Wellingson often complained when new officers were sent to him that they were useless incompetent popping jays, but somehow he survived them.

You communicate the army is winning not because it's perfect, but because in its imperfections, it is still dramatically more durable than its opponent, which I think a really interesting question about culture and warfare.

All the way through this, this being the Napoleonic Horse, the British stay just below the military crest so that the French artillery will pass over them.

The British shoot from line, so he can bring all of their weapons to bear.

Simultaneously, the French march up the hill in a column, which allows them to control the much less professional troops that they have, but at the same time means when they collide with the British that only the people on the outside of the column will be able to fight.

And this goes on consistently with Wellington for the entire period of warfare.

You know, up through Waterloo.

They never learn.

Well, they did learn, and they tried to counter it.

But as you say in the end, as Wellington said of Waterloo, they came on in the same old way, and we saw them off in the same old way.

The French understood that this was a problem.

Their solution to the problem was to try and deploy the column into line just before they clashed with the British.

It never worked, because the British simply advanced and blasted them with musketry as they tried to deploy.

But they did know it, and they tried two things to avoid it.

One was to send more skirmishes ahead, but they came up against the British riflemen, and the British had the rifle, and the French didn't have rifles, and they came up against the too deep British line, and as you say, every British musket could fire, whereas in a column only the guys in the rank and a few on the files at the side could reply.

So although the French outnumbered the British, they were far outnumbered in the number of muskets that they could use.

And to me too, it's astonishing that the French really didn't abolish that method, but it had worked so well for them against every other enemy that they just couldn't give it up.

And they did the same at Waterloo.

The Imperial Guard attacked in column and met a British line, and the line is always going to win.

I had to ask you one almost sully question, I guess do you feel closer to Sharp or to Hautred?

Well, that's an interesting question.

Probably Sharp, because I've been writing him for so long, and if I'm walking the dog, I hear him talking in my head Outred is in many ways more fun to right because we know less about his period, so I can make up more things for him.

But Sharp is incredibly real to me.

So yes, I'm sure that Sharp is the answer to that question.

You've always sort of ended the novels with the promise that Sharp and his sergeant Harper well Marchigan, but you don't at the dinners.

Are we at the end of the Great Journey with Sharp?

I have a feeling probably we are, but I always say never say never, And who knows.

In two or three years time, when I'm wondering what the next book should be, I'll hear Sharp saying, well, you haven't taken me to the Battle of Alberherira yet, have you.

So we'll see.

We'll see in the interim.

What are you working on?

I'm working on another Utred.

And again I mean this is we went back to about a year ago and I was thinking what will be the next book?

And Utred said, hey, how about me?

And I'm doing what I promised myself i'd never do with Utre, which was going back in his history and sort of love tailing this book into the series.

But we'll see whether it works.

I have to confess, the first time I picked up the initial volume where he's with his father in that very first battle, I actually didn't read it very long.

I have read the first couple of chapters and I thought, this is really so different.

I couldn't wrap my head around it.

And then about ten years later I came back and realized how brilliant it was.

And I don't know what it was about my two connections with Lutred, but I become a very deep fan of that series and think us a remarkable achievement.

Well, thank you, missus speaker.

You dedicated this book to Susan Watt.

You're longtime editor and somebody who wanted you to reveal more of Sharpe's emotional life.

How did Susan shape the whole experience of Sharp over the years.

Well, Susan was a quite extraordinary editor.

I think she felt motherly towards Sharp, and she cared very deeply about him, and she was always urging me to describe his emotions more and I would just say, well, he's always grumpy, that's about it, and I refuse to do it.

I remember when I wrote the three Arthurian books, she wanted to know more about Arthur's childhood, which resulted in one line in the book what is the Egg to the Eagle?

And I refused to do it.

She was a wonderful editor and the books were always improved after she had gone through them and made her requests.

Since she had known her for so long, would you go through a process of sort of chatting about the book before you started writing, or just showing up with the book?

Showed up with the book, which annoyed her.

She always wanted to see early drafts, and I always refused.

I said, you'll see the book when it's finished.

And then I would try and put in little traps for her, because I would understand that the one thing she was really going to object about the book, so I'd put in four or five others, things which I would pretend to fight for and give way on so I didn't have to give way on the big one.

I think she eventually realized what I was doing and became better at sorting it out.

Well, that's very funny, you know.

I always have this problem when I write.

I really don't like being edited.

No one does.

Yeah, make me feel better.

Frankly, I want to thank you for joining me.

A bit more importantly, I want to thank you for all the years you've spent developing several worlds so that people like me can literally lose themselves in Bernard Cornwall's.

World, and I want to thank you for your support which has always been wonderful.

Thank you, mister speaker.

You and I have to tell people your new book, Sharp Storm is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and people can also follow you on your website at Bernard Cornwell dot net.

So thank you very much for joining me and having this wonderful conversation.

Thank you, mister Sweakt.

Thank you to my guest, Bernard Cornwell.

Newtsworld is produced by kingridh Thwreet sixty and iHeartMedia.

Our executive producers, Guardnzie Sloan, our researchers Rachel Peterson.

Your work for the show was created by Steve Fenley.

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