The Song of the Sword
All Uhtred has to do is break his pledge of allegiance to Alfred, and the land some call England could soon be called Daneland...
The year is 885 and there is a fragile peace in England, but it is unlikely to last. Northern raiders are arriving in the land, and only Alfred, King of Wessex, and his ablest warrior, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, can stop them. But the valiant Saxon warrior, raised by the Danes, has his own ambitions to fulfil alongside the bloodthirsty Vikings. The dreaded brothers Sigefrid and Erik Thurgilson, who with their Norwegians have taken the important port of Lundene in the mouth of the river Temes, count on him as the future king of neighbouring Mercia! Will Uhtred believe their promises and betray the oath he owes to Alfred? Or will he drive the conquering Northerners back into the sea in his name?
The fourth volume of the gripping saga of early medieval England during the reign of King Alfred, later known as the Great. The protagonist Uhtred must choose between loyalty to his ruler and his own glory.
They wrote about the book:
Extremely engaging and still just as fascinating.
- Kirkus Reviews
The skill with which Cornwell combines historical fact and suspenseful narrative while describing the power struggles of the time is truly unique.
- The Observer
Bernard Cornwell
The abandoned war baby - the father was a Canadian airman, the mother a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force of the British RAF - was adopted by a family from a fundamentalist sect in the southern English county of Essex. However, the atheistically inclined young man managed to escape from their influence by escaping to the University of London, where he became fascinated with the field of history. He even taught it briefly at secondary school, but soon found a foothold at the BBC and was later promoted to Head of Programme for Northern Ireland. When he tried to move from Belfast to the US with his American wife Judy, he was denied a work permit and decided to pursue a career as a writer, which can be done remotely without official paperwork. Among the best-known works of the author, who has been a recipient of the Order of the British Empire since 2006, are the twelve-volume series about the Napoleonic soldier Richard Sharpe and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles series, set in the era of King Alfred the Great (871-899). Both epics were made into a series: The Sharpean one was revived by ITV with Sean Bean in the lead role, while the Anglo-Saxon ones (under the title The Last Kingdom) were picked up by BBC 2 in 2015 and later by Netflix.
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| Code: | AK1I869 |