Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell, OBEis an English author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. Cornwell has written historical novels primarily of English history in five series and one series of contemporary thriller novels. A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how the novel matches or differs from history, for the re-telling, and what you might see at the modern site of...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 February 1944
I'd like to cut it down to three books in two years instead of two a year - but whether that'll happen I don't know.
But publishers are in the business of making profits, so they love getting two books a year. They'd have three if they could.
It just so happens that I write books, and I'm amazingly lucky that the books sell well all across the world, but even the biggest financial success will not compensate for an ill-lived life.
I'm fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.
Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.
Research is a lifelong occupation so it's hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold... doesn't bear thinking about, but I suppose we'd have made it work somehow.
So far it's 43 books in 25 years.
And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.
Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
Actually I moved to New Jersey in 1980 and didn't discover Chatham until 1990, by which time the books were selling, but it was still a daft decision, based solely on love.
I start early - usually by 5 am, and work through to 5 pm, with breaks for lunch, boring exercise, etc etc. But it's usually a full day.
And though I've lived in the States for over 25 years and am now an American citizen, I still hear British voices in my head.
We have a gaff-rigged topsail cutter, which sounds much grander than she really is, but she's exquisitely beautiful and shamefully slow and we spend a lot of time aboard when we can.