Well, it seems that early assessment was not too far off the mark. Years ago, I once persuaded a gentleman in my local bookstore who said he loved the Sharpe series but had got fed up with Bernard Cornwell’s medieval novels to try The Last Kingdom, on the grounds that it was essentially Sharpe with Vikings and battleaxes instead of rifles and Frenchmen. When Aethelflaed, Alfred’s lovely and spirited daughter, enters the frame, Uhtred’s uncertain loyalties shape the fate of kingdoms. Uhtred has to choose between allying with the Danes, whom he likes but does not entirely trust, and remaining loyal to Alfred, whom he neither likes nor trusts but to whom he is bound by a sworn oath. When a new group of Norse adventurers come to Lundene (modern London) bent on conquering Wessex, they offer to recognise Uhtred as King of Mercia if he will join them. Alfred and the Danes have signed a treaty, ceding north and east England to Danish rule (the Danelaw), and the land is more or less at peace. Still reluctantly oath-bound to serve King Alfred of Wessex, he is lord of the burh of Coccham (modern Cookham) on Wessex’s eastern border. Uhtred of Bebbanburg is now 28, married to his beloved Gisela, sister of the Danish king of Northumbria (told in Book 3, The Lords of the North). Alfred of Wessex (later known as Alfred the Great), Aethelred of Mercia, Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed and the Danish leader Haesten are based on historical figures. 360 pages.įourth in Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred series, Sword Song is set in 885.
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