![]() ![]() Eventually, his journey leads him to Poitiers, where all of the novel’s elements, mystical and otherwise, come together in a virtuoso recreation of a complex military encounter - partly speculative but based on verifiable fact. This quest provides the armature for a series of skirmishes, adventures and hair’s-breadth escapes, in the course of which Thomas meets a few old enemies and acquires some new ones. As the new novel opens, Thomas once again finds himself on a mystical quest, this time for la Malice, the sword supposedly used by Peter to defend Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Its specific focus is the largely forgotten Battle of Poitiers, in which hungry, exhausted British troops defeated a well-fed, well-rested, numerically superior force of French soldiers.Īlthough “1356” is an independent narrative, it does bring back a familiar Cornwell character: Thomas of Hookton, hero of “ The Archer’s Tale,” the first in a series of novels concerning the quest for the Holy Grail. In “ 1356,” Cornwell turns his attention to the Hundred Years’ War waged between England and France for control of the disputed French throne. ![]() Bernard Cornwell is a gifted and prolific historical novelist who seems at home in virtually every era, from the Napoleonic Wars (the Richard Sharpe series), to the American Revolution (“ The Fort”), to the world of prehistory (“ Stonehenge”). ![]()
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