December 27, 2024 • 34 mins
Newt talks with Bernard Cornwell about his book, “The Last Kingdom,” one of the most successful historical fiction series of all time. The novels tell the epic story of the birth of England and introduces one of the greatest ever fictional heroes: the iconic Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the Saxon-born, Norse-raised warrior and rebel.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World. The Last Kingdom is
one of the most successful historical fiction series of our time.
The novels tell the epic story of the birth of
England and introduces one of the greatest fictional characters ever,
the iconic Putred of Babenberg, the Saxon born, Norse raised
warrior and rebel. In his new book, Bernard Cornwell revisits
(00:29):
Utred's realm illuminating elements of the Anglo Saxon world he
couldn't fully explain in his novels, and I have to
say this is one of the most creative and innovative
approaches I have ever seen to this kind of historic fiction.
Utred's Feast offers rich background on the books of The
Last Kingdom series, presenting a fascinating detailed view of Anglo
(00:52):
Saxon life in all its splendor, danger and beauty. With
his remarkable narrative flair, cornwy Well explores every aspect of
this historical period, from the clothes, to weapons to food,
offering beautifully crafted recipes of early Anglo Saxon fair created
(01:13):
by renowned British chef Suzanne Pollock. In addition, he has
written three new stories exclusive to this book the reveal
the man behind the Shield, Ughtred as a young boy,
as Alfred's advisor, and as Prince. So those of you
who've been following my podcast know that I'm just a
(01:34):
tremendous fan Bernard Conwell's work, both his Napoleonic series, which
is amazing in his own right and Utred's Life, and
his new book, Utred's Feast inside the World of the
Last Kingdom, is such a creative and innovative book and also,
by the way, a cookbook, so it shows a double purpose. Bernard,
(02:05):
welcome back and thank you for joining me again on
Newts World. And since I'm one of your biggest fans,
it is a thrill to have you here.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, it's a great pleasure to be back with you.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm curious how did you come up with the notion
of Ughtred's Feast. It's a totally different approach and it's
I think brilliant.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Actually, I think it was Suzanne's idea. And Suzanne, I
hate to correct you, mister speaker. She's a good American.
Although she was born in Beirut and mainly raised in Africa.
Her father was a CIA operative. Suzanne had read the books,
and she chided me one day, just saying, whenever you
describe Utrit's food, you always have him eating the same thing.
(02:47):
It's salted meat, smoked fish, or cheese and bread. The
poor man must have eaten something else. And I said, well,
you're a cook, you tell me what he would eat.
And she took that as a challenge and went off
and came up with a whole lot of recipes of
Saxon food that could be as it were recreated today.
And rather foolishly, I said to my publisher we could
(03:08):
publish a cookbook on Saxon food and they said, yes,
if you write three short stories to go with it.
And I hate writing short stories. I found it incredibly difficult,
but I thought, okay, let's have a go. So I
think I have to credit Suzanne with the birth of
the book.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's great, and I apologize we were told she was
a British chef.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh no, she's an American who cooks in America. She
lives mostly in Charleston and sometimes goes to Richmond, Virginia,
and she's a superb cook.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
That's great. So have you actually tried the various recipes
very bravely?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, I rather haven't taken her vegetable recipes, as I'm
not a vegetable fan, but the meat recipes are superb,
and my favorite in the book, I think is no
not meat, is peas pudding, which is basically the food
that kept European peasants alive for two thousand years. We
call it hummers.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Did so because it was easy to raise and produce
large quantities. Why was it so central.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, food was always a difficulty. You have to feed
yourself through the winter. You need ingredients that are accessible,
and beans are easy to grow and easy to process.
I think it's simply the availability of the ingredients, and we.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Forget that prior to the discovery of the New World, we
didn't have potatoes in the Old World, and so potatoes
gradually became the food of choice for poor people because
they're easy to raise.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I think it's one of Oocher's great regrets that he
was born and lived before the discovery of the potato.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I want to ask you about how you approach this.
You've written a number of smaller sets of books, but
you've written two really long series where you really see
the character and you see their development, and do you
realize when you're starting that it's going to be I
think one of those now what nineteen or twenty volumes
(05:00):
about the Napoleonic era.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
I think they are twenty three, now twenty three.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
This is I guess number what fourteen in the Utrix series.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
I think it is. Yes, I think I knew when
I began Utred that it was going to be a series,
because I knew it was a long story. I certainly
knew that about Sharp, that if Sharp was going to
fight his way right through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,
it had to be a long series. Even so, I
never ever thought it would be as long as it's
turned out to be, and it may yet turn out
(05:30):
to be longer. I haven't given up on him. Utred
is the same. I haven't totally given up on Utred.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
You have coming out in about six months or so,
you'll have another Sharp's novel coming.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Out, Yes, calld Sharp's Command that comes out. I think
in January.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
You manage to go back and find new niches in
their lives that give you an excuse for the next round.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I leave gapped.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Look as a fan, I have to say, I find
myself literally getting involved in their evolution.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, that's very good, you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Know, watching them grow and evolve, and the fact that
the same person could take somebody as a very young
person as you do even more with Utra than you
do as Sharp, and sort of grow with them. But
I am really astounded both at the way you have
shaped these characters over time so that they have a
natural evolution, but also parallel to that and much harder,
(06:27):
or at least as art. You have a knack for
writing stories that your use of English is remarkable and
you just get people in there your natural storyteller. Now
is that also true just orally or is that only
when you're writing.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think it's mostly true when I'm writing. I don't know.
I really don't know. I think, yeah, I'm going to
say it's mostly true when I'm writing.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When I was an undergraduate of Memory, I had a
medieval history professor named George Kutnaugh who said one day
he actually had no idea what was going on in
terms of newspapers because he was busy thinking about the
fourteenth century, and when he woke up in the morning
he was in the middle of the fourteenth century. And
I have a little bit of a sense here that
(07:10):
these are living stories to you.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
No, I know exactly how he feels. I mean, if
I'm writing a book about the fourteenth century, which I
actually am at the moment, then when I wake up,
I'm thinking about it. When I take the dog for
a walk, I'm thinking about it. I mean, it's you
live in that period. But as for the storytelling, I
always think that the great joy of what I do
is that every day I sit down and I write,
(07:34):
and I haven't a clue what's going to happen. I
don't know how the book is going to end. I
don't know how the chapter I'm writing is going to end.
And the joy of reading a good novel is to
find out what happens. And for me, the joy of
writing one is to find out what happens. And I
think that's the clue.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Do you literally not know? I mean, when you start
one of these stories, do you really not know the end?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I really don't. I mean, if it's one of the sharps,
because most of those are built round and the great
battles that the Duke of Wellington fought in Spain and Portugal,
I mean, if it was take one example, sharp sword,
I know it's going to end at the Battle of Salamanca,
but how Sharp gets there and what's going to be
at stake for him at that battle, I don't know.
(08:16):
And very often, certainly this is true in the Utra books.
I'd get to chapter twelve and think, I haven't a
clue how this book is going to end, and just
keep writing is the answer. And it's very frustrating because
you suddenly find out how it's going to end, and
you think, I've now got to go back and change
everything in the book to make sure this ending works.
But it does work in the end.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
But I've had some novelists tell me that their characters
inform them. They suddenly develop their own logic, in their
own patterns. You're almost transcribing them rather than inventing them.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, they make decisions which often I dislike, but I
let them do it because that's what they want to do.
And it's extraordinary. I mean, in the Sharp books, Sharp,
who is an inveterate enemy of the French in all
the books, ends up marrying a frenchwoman and living in France.
I never intended him to do that. He just did
(09:11):
it on his own, and as far as I know,
he's still there and very happy, and I think that's
actually rather fun when characters dictate to you what they
want to do.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You do have a legitimate tie to Ughtred, if I
remember correctly, through a very distant relative of yours.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
He's a distant ancestor of mine. Yes, indeed he is,
and he claimed ancestry from the god Odin, so I
think I can claim ancestry from Odin too, which is
rather nice thought.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So you were currently Odin's writer, That's one way to
think of it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I hadn't thought of that, but yes, why not? Was that?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
A part of what got you into Haughtred was Beeglenberg itself?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yes, it was. I had long wanted to write a
series of novels that described the creation of England because
I realized that although I received a very good education
in Britain, I hadn't a clue how England had actually
come to be. But I didn't know quite how to
tell that story. And then I discovered that I was
descended from this great warrior Utred of Bebenberg, and I thought,
(10:16):
that's it. I'll tell his story because he was alive
at that time. Now we know very little about him.
I mean everything I put in the books is fiction.
I mean, I've given the poor man a much more
exciting life than he probably led. But that was the key.
The key to it was discovering that I was descended
from this Saxon warrior.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Damon Brog itself is open now to the public, isn't.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It It is. It's called Bambrough Castle and it's a
magnificent place. The castle we see today was mostly rebuilt
in the nineteenth century, but it's still an extraordinary place,
built on this volcanic plug of rock on the Northumbrian coast,
and it wasn't until it was battered by artillery that
it actually fell. And it was an enormous fortress that
(11:02):
resisted the vikings and lasted right through history. And it's
still there and open to visitors and well worth a visit.
It's an extraordinary place.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And it also resisted the Scots it did.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Indeed, it was the favorite place where you imprisoned Scots
because they couldn't get out and they couldn't be rescued.
King David the Second of Scotland ended up for a
time there before he was sent to the Tower of London.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
One of the things that struck me is Historically, I've
often always identified al For the Great with the development
of England or engla Land as you called it in
that period, But in fact there's like three or four
generations of fighting to solidify the ability of the English
(12:04):
to govern the southern two thirds of the kingdom.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yes, I mean Alfred. You can credit Alfred with the
idea of England or Englandland. He was an extraordinary man,
and while he was king the English, the Saxon suffered
the biggest reverse when the Danes the Vikings really succeeded
in just about capturing the whole island except for a
little patch of the west country, and Alfred rebounded from
(12:30):
that to defeat them. But it was his son Edward
and his grandson Athelstan who actually made and his daughter
indeed Ethelflayd, who created what we now call England. But
all they were doing was building his dream. And it
was Alfred's dream of a united Saxon country that became England.
(12:51):
So he certainly deserves the epithet the Great, and without him,
I'm not sure it would have happened.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I was very struck in the TV series. I thought
that the person who played Alfred was really convincing.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
He was wonderful. David Dawson, he was absolutely splendid. And
because I had to follow real history, I felt that
some of the life went from the books when Alfred died,
because without Alfred to bounce off, Ughtred was rather rootless,
but he kept going.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
There are enough challenges from the concept of England to
the reality of England. Your description of the Ultimate Battle,
which I didn't realize. We're not totally sure where the
battle took place when the three armies came.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
We are now, we are now. There's a wonderful scholar
in Charleston, South Carolina called Michael Livingstone who has become
really the world's greatest expert on where battles took place,
and he's extraordinarily clever. But the real credit for discovering
the battle site goes to a group of amateur archaeologists
in Britain who discovered the site. It's on the wirrald
(13:56):
near Liverpool, and Michael almost immediately visited and confirmed their discovery.
So we do know now where Brunenberg was fought, but
for hundreds of years the battle site was lost, and
indeed the battle itself was almost forgotten, and yet after
Hastings it's probably the most important battle fought on British soil.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, that's what I was struck by in the novel
where you deal with that. I mean, here's this extraordinary
moment when all these armies come together in one last
desperate effort to stop the English, and they easily could
have won.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
They could and should in many ways they should have won.
It was Athelstan, Alfred's grandson who led the so called English.
He would have said he led the West Saxons. And
it was a brutal, horrible battle. It was one of
these battles of the shield Wall, which are almost unthinkable today.
I mean, when you are within three or four feet
of your enemy, you can smell him, and you're hacking
(14:53):
at each other with lead weighted axes and swords and spears.
They were gruesome battles. Brunenberg was an enormous battle which
ended up in a total victory for the Saxons.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And at that point it sort of settles down. But
I mean, the truth is English history is pretty violent
for virtue its entire period.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So is American mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Listen, I plead guilty. We've had our share of conflict.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
But the making of England was really a war. It
was a brutal war between the Viking invaders and the
Saxons trying to defend their own territory and retake their territory,
and very little of it was peaceful. It's marked by
a series of battles and it was indeed very gruesome
and very bloody.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I want to see if I've captured where you're coming from.
My reading is that Ughtred is attracted to the Norse life,
but ultimately as loyal to the English. He always ends
up being loyal to the concept of England.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
He does, but he was brought up by Danes, and
he actually loves the day. He marries a Dane and
they appeal to him. He likes their lifestyle, he likes
their attitude to life and death, and in many ways
he fights like a Dane. There was a kind of
feeling among the Saxons that it took three Saxons to
(16:16):
defeat one Dane, when Utred basically says, well, in that case,
we'd better fight like the Danes, and he does. He's
a Viking at heart, but he's a Viking who's on
our side, and there were Danes who fought in athols
Stan's army. By this time, they'd settled in England, they'd
married Saxon women, and they felt as English as the English,
and quite a lot of them were in athols Stan's
(16:37):
army fighting against their Danish and Irish enemies.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
One of the things that striking, and I'm just now
watching a movie called Redbad, which I think is either
Danish or Norwegian, but it's about the degree to which
Christianity is dissolving Paganism. So the Christianity becomes a major
weapon in terms of unifying England and in terms of
(17:03):
ultimately undermining Viking civilization.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I think that's absolutely true, just as it undermines Anglo
Saxon culture. And Ughtred is stubbornly a pagan. I don't
think that's out of any great belief in pagan gods.
It's basically to annoy Alfred, and having taken that position,
he sticks to it. But the war was more than
just a political struggle. It really was a religious struggle,
(17:28):
and Alfred saw it very much in those terms. He
believed that if a Dane converted to Christianity, then that
he became a friend, not an enemy.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So in a very raal sense, the missionary priests are
a significant part of Alfred's grand strategy.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
They are, indeed, and converting Danish rulers of Viking leaders
to Christianity was vitally important because once they were converted,
he believed they would turn all their followers into Christians,
who in turn would unite with the Saxon Christians.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
The process of all that, you have moments it's a
little hard to know who's up and who's done. I mean,
you have King Canute, for example, who has an enormous
influence and is one of the strongest leaders, in fact,
probably the strongest leader in the North in his lifetime.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Oh indeed, he comes a little after Pure and it's
Canute indeed who is responsible for taking Bebenberg away from
the family. But Canute was an enormously successful and great leader,
and he is often called Canute the Great too, who
takes England and makes it part of the Viking Empire.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
When you look at all this, I'm fascinated that you
have managed the nutrient's feast to weave together historical stories
where you're just a great storyteller worth literally a cookbook.
It's a brilliant concept. I don't know very many people
who could have pulled this off. It just struck me
that the de gree to which the Anglo Saxon diet
(18:58):
of that period could be translated into modern meals, well.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
That's what Suzanne did. I mean, Suzanne was determined to
make them accessible that if you can go to almost
any supermarket, you can buy the ingredients and then she
tells you how to prepare them, and it's actually rather
a healthy diet.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
They didn't have processed sugar for one thing.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
There's no process that you had to have honey instead,
so there's no sugar in it. And okay, it can
be quite meat heavy, but I like that, so I'm
not going to complain.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Did they actually have that much meat?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
They certainly had a lot, but not enough to feed
everybody sort of thing. I'm sure most peasants kept a pig,
and November was known as the month of slaughter, where
you slaughtered your livestock, just keeping a few alive to
breed the following year, and you would then salt that
meat down or smoke the meat, and that would feed
you through the winter. But if you had one or
(19:54):
two pigs, that didn't provide that much meat for the
whole winter. Meanwhile, the aristocracy, like Utre himself, would probably
eat meat year round because they were privileged.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Now, you also make a point that bread and rolls
and that sort of product are very central to their
whole dial.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Bread is very, very central, and according to Suzanne who
has tried cooking some of it, it does taste a
bit different, tastes rather rustic. The one thing it doesn't
have in it is chips of stone, which they would
have had because as the millwheels ground away, some stone
would chip off and it would end up in the
flour and you'd bite down on bread and there goes
(20:35):
another molar.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
How's he going to say? I think most modern people
would find that a bit tricky. But baking, as I
remember correctly, one of the points you make is I
think literally having a baker goes back to at least
two thousand BC, so bread has been integral.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
They have the oven, I mean a bread oven is
not easy to make, and right through until at least
Tudor time, it was often there was just one baker
in town and you took your pies to him to
have them baked. You could make a pie, but you
didn't have your own oven, so you'd walk it down
the street and give it to the baker and he'd
charge you a penny or two and bake your pie.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
The meat itself was usually cooked over an open fire,
wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yes, it was open fire, or it was braised. I
mean they had good cooking pans, but yes, it's opened.
A lot of it is open fire cooking.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Would they have had metal cooking pans?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh, yes, yes, I mean, and we've discovered a lot
of them. They had metal cooking pans and metal spits
and enormous cauldrons.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
I've started reading the gallows for Sharp command your ability
to go from Anglo Saxon food around eight hundred and
then jumping to eighteen twenty or eighteen ten. They're totally
different worlds, totally different rhythms.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
They are. But I've lived with Sharp now for forty years,
so I mean, picking Sharp up again was not difficult.
I mean, he lurks at the back of my head
all the time, and I've always wanted to write one
more story of Sharp in Spain, and this was it,
and he sprang to life really quite easily.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well thanks to you. I ended up one day touring
the walls of Taurus VDRA with a local expert and
just getting a feel for that. I think Wellington's campaign
is extraordinary at every level, starting in India.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
He was an absolutely extraordinary man. I mean, for my money,
they're certainly the greatest general in British history and probably
in European history. The French would disagree, but then Waterloo
happened and they can't argue with that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I teach a class for major generals, and I always
tell him the story about the head of the horse
Guards the British Army Headquarters writing Wellington and saying we're
sending you a new division commander. It's Lord So and so.
You will have heard rumors that he is crazy, but
when they released him from the asylum, they assured me
that he was fine, although I must say he looked
(23:21):
a little wild in the eye when I said goodbye
to him at the porch. And I just tell him,
this is one of his three division commanders, so don't
tell me you have a problem.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Who then went on to fail spectacularly. Yes, he was
as mad as a hatter.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, and so Wellington had to run the army and
run that division because he had no commander who could
actually run. It's one of those marvelous moments that's sort
of hard to explain. Yeah, I may have told you
one time when we did a podcast, but I really
got turned on to you by General Jim Mattis. We
were having dinner one night and he said he had
(23:54):
never understood Waterloo until he read your version, and he
said he could understand it. And that led me into
Sharps and then everything. Since then, you say you had
a four star general Secretary of Defense who thought you
wrote the best single explanation of Waterloo. I thought that
was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Waterloo is just a great story. I mean, it is
an extraordinary story because although the battle begins around eleven
o'clock in the morning, by about half past seven that night,
you really couldn't tell who was going to win. Which
is why when I wrote my only nonfiction book, which
is the story of Waterloo, it felt in many ways
like writing a novel, simply because the story was on
(24:34):
the knife edge all the way through until the last chapter.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
If the Prussians had not shown up, could Wellington have
stood or would he have been forced back?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Probably forced back because obviously Napoleon could have thrown more
troops at him. I mean, Napoleon made so many mistakes
that day that it's very difficult. I mean, I'm told
by people who wargame, but it's almost impossible for the
British to win on the war gaming tables. But you know,
raw factor is that they did.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
One of the things I'm curious about when you stay
with Sharps for a second, somehow this relatively small professional
army had an enormous sense of morale and pride. They
were willing to take on you, Jode, just because they
were who.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
They were, Yes, they were, and it was partly, I
think because they were so superbly led. I mean a
sergeant wrote after the wars, all we ever ask is
for Wellington's leaders. We know we'd be well led, we
know we'd be well fed, and we know we'd win.
And Wellington himself reckoned that army was the finest army
(25:39):
probably in all Britain's history, and he only wished he
had it with him at Waterloo, which he didn't, of course,
but the same thing applied. They had total faith in him,
And I mean he once said that the presence of
Napoleon on a battlefield was worth at least ten thousand men.
Some people say he said forty thousand men, but I
would say the presence of Wellington on a battlefield was
(26:00):
probably worth the same. They had total faith in him.
He was a general who never lost a battle.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Now you cover this in the very early sharpest books.
To understand Wellington and the Peninsula, you have to look
at Wellesley as he was then in India. That the
Indian experience shapes him in a way that no other
British general has been shaped.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Absolutely, he learned his trade really in India. And in
later life he was asked what was he most proud
of and he answered assay, which was at one of
the battles in India, And to say, he took an
enormous risk and threw his small army really into a
position where it could have been completely defeated and won.
And he was incredibly proud of his strategy on that day.
(26:45):
And he's often called a great defensive general, which he was,
and this is really an insult to him, which the
French rather liked. But in fact he was also a
great attacking general, as he proved a to say, and
forever after Salamancaca was an extraordinary attacking battle in which
he attacked and, as somebody said, destroyed forty thousand frenchmen
(27:06):
in forty minutes.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think that's the one where he's sitting on the horse, yes,
holding the chicken leg, and he suddenly realized that they're split,
and he throws the chicken leg and says, I have him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yes, he is Marmonte, perdue monche Aliva Marmont, of my
dear Aliva. Who is this Spanish liaison officer? Marmont is lost?
And he chucks the chicken leg over his shoulder and
gallops after the third division.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But you know your description of a say, I'll just
say this for all of our listeners every rudder three times,
because you capture the Scottish battalions or the Scott's battalions,
the way they fought, and the discipline and the odds
they fought against, and the degree to which at some
point one side of the other is going to have
(27:52):
its morale break and the side that has its morale
break is doomed.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Is doomed. Yes, And it was interesting in the Scottish
Italian One of them got cut up very badly and
an Indian farmer when I visited at Say, told me
about finding the bones when he plowed the field, and
he said they were very big men, and I thought, okay,
but I doubted that they were any larger than the
rest of the army. But it turned out he was right,
(28:18):
and I came across figures that showed that Scottish soldiers
on the whole were three or four inches taller than
the English and Welsh soldiers. And the Scots were enormously brave.
And it's more than morale, it's also discipline. It's an
iron discipline. As one battalion commander said to his men
at the Battle of Waterloo, as long as you stand,
(28:39):
you'll live. But if just one of you turns and
runs away, were all dead. So just stand, and they did.
And the morning of Waterloo Napoleon was worned. It had
never fought against British infantry, and he was worn by
his generals that they were incredibly tough to beat. And
he rather dismissed and said, just because you've all been
(29:01):
defeated by Wellington, you think he's a great general. But
I tell you he's a bad general and his soldiers
are bad soldiers.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
There are two things about that whole French relationship with
Wellington I've never fully understood. The first is that the
British figure out, because the French are so reliant on
their artillery that if you just stay slightly behind the
military crest, virtually all the French cannonade will be irrelevant.
It'll be noisy, but it's not going to hurt anybody.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
It would hurt a few, but not many.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
But the French never seem to understand this.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, they didn't.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I mean, in all those battles, Wellington does exactly the
same thing. They're just slightly behind the military crest, the
bombardment's over, and.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He tells them are to lie down so that a
cannonball or shell that skims the crest won't hit them
in the head. And there's a rather untactful moment before
the Battle of Waterloo when Wellington visits Blucha, the Prussian general,
and sees his men lined up on the slopes at
len Yi and says, that's not very sensible. Why don't
(30:05):
you take them back over the crest where they can't
be hit by the French artillery. And I think it
was nisenhow who was an aid to camp to Blueesche.
Rather cavalier said, our men like to see the enemy. Well,
his men did see the enemy and died. They were
cut down by French artillery two days later at Waterloo.
The same thing did not happen to Wellington, because he'd
(30:27):
retired them over the crest. You know, it's the oldest
trick in the book, hyder men from the enemy.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
And the second part of that is that consistently for
the entire Peninsula campaign up through Waterloo, the British ability
to shoot from the line against the column, so that
the British given anything, not even parody. If they're only
on numbers, say four to one, they're actually going to
bring far more muskets to bear than the French.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Are yes, And the British were the only army to
actually practice with live ammunition. It sounds extrame ordinary, but
I guess ammunition was precious and short, and the others didn't.
And the French relied heavily on the column, which is
a very tight formation. But nobody rather in the middle
of the column can actually fire a musket. All they
can do is just keep marching forward while the guys
(31:15):
in the front two ranks and down the side files
may be able to fire, and they're faced by this
very thin line only too deep of red coats, where
every man can fire. And the French did realize this,
I mean, they were not completely stupid, and they developed
a tactic to get over it, which was to advance
in column because it was a quick way to advance,
(31:36):
but just before you got to within firing range you
deployed into line. But that didn't work either. They tried
that at Waterloo and it didn't work at all. So
the line versus column is a trophy of the Peninsula
Wall and indeed of Waterloo.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
It's a fascinating process. And of course the other thing
is you have to have pretty good logistics to have
live fire practice.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
You do, and Wellington was a master of logistics, which
is really that's one of the things he learned in
India how to keep his armies supplied, and throughout his career,
logistics is a key to almost everything. I mean, his
worst moments were in the retreat from Burgos, where logistics
fell apart because of the mistake of a quartermaster, and
(32:22):
that was probably his most miserable time in all his career.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Then tarding a lesson not to let it happen.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yes, he blamed himself. If something went wrong, it was
his fault.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I just want to say your new book, Utred's Feast
is about as creative and unique an approach as I've
seen in a series. Anybody who has not started either
the series involving Utrid or the series involving Sharp, you
have a wonderful experience ahead of you. This is one
of the great novelists of our time. He writes just
(32:54):
remarkably useful books where you just learn a lot of
stuff while also being entertained. Bernard, I really want to
thank you, as I think you know, I get great
joy out of doing a podcast with you because I'm
so impressed and fascinated with your abilities, and I really
appreciate you taking the time to talk with us both
about the art of being a writer and about Utred's Feast.
(33:17):
And in April, Sharp's Command will be coming out and
hopefully we'll have a chance to talk again.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's always a pleasure and a privilege to talk to you,
mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Thank you to my guest, Bernard Cornwell. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Utridz Feast on
our show page. At newsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced
by Gingers three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is
Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(33:50):
to the team at Gingish three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of neut World consign up for my three freeweekly
columns at Gingrish three sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
newt Gingrich. This is neutrald
On this episode of News World. The Last Kingdom is
one of the most successful historical fiction series of our time.
The novels tell the epic story of the birth of
England and introduces one of the greatest fictional characters ever,
the iconic Putred of Babenberg, the Saxon born, Norse raised
warrior and rebel. In his new book, Bernard Cornwell revisits
(00:29):
Utred's realm illuminating elements of the Anglo Saxon world he
couldn't fully explain in his novels, and I have to
say this is one of the most creative and innovative
approaches I have ever seen to this kind of historic fiction.
Utred's Feast offers rich background on the books of The
Last Kingdom series, presenting a fascinating detailed view of Anglo
(00:52):
Saxon life in all its splendor, danger and beauty. With
his remarkable narrative flair, cornwy Well explores every aspect of
this historical period, from the clothes, to weapons to food,
offering beautifully crafted recipes of early Anglo Saxon fair created
(01:13):
by renowned British chef Suzanne Pollock. In addition, he has
written three new stories exclusive to this book the reveal
the man behind the Shield, Ughtred as a young boy,
as Alfred's advisor, and as Prince. So those of you
who've been following my podcast know that I'm just a
(01:34):
tremendous fan Bernard Conwell's work, both his Napoleonic series, which
is amazing in his own right and Utred's Life, and
his new book, Utred's Feast inside the World of the
Last Kingdom, is such a creative and innovative book and also,
by the way, a cookbook, so it shows a double purpose. Bernard,
(02:05):
welcome back and thank you for joining me again on
Newts World. And since I'm one of your biggest fans,
it is a thrill to have you here.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, it's a great pleasure to be back with you.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I'm curious how did you come up with the notion
of Ughtred's Feast. It's a totally different approach and it's
I think brilliant.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Actually, I think it was Suzanne's idea. And Suzanne, I
hate to correct you, mister speaker. She's a good American.
Although she was born in Beirut and mainly raised in Africa.
Her father was a CIA operative. Suzanne had read the books,
and she chided me one day, just saying, whenever you
describe Utrit's food, you always have him eating the same thing.
(02:47):
It's salted meat, smoked fish, or cheese and bread. The
poor man must have eaten something else. And I said, well,
you're a cook, you tell me what he would eat.
And she took that as a challenge and went off
and came up with a whole lot of recipes of
Saxon food that could be as it were recreated today.
And rather foolishly, I said to my publisher we could
(03:08):
publish a cookbook on Saxon food and they said, yes,
if you write three short stories to go with it.
And I hate writing short stories. I found it incredibly difficult,
but I thought, okay, let's have a go. So I
think I have to credit Suzanne with the birth of
the book.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's great, and I apologize we were told she was
a British chef.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh no, she's an American who cooks in America. She
lives mostly in Charleston and sometimes goes to Richmond, Virginia,
and she's a superb cook.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
That's great. So have you actually tried the various recipes
very bravely?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, I rather haven't taken her vegetable recipes, as I'm
not a vegetable fan, but the meat recipes are superb,
and my favorite in the book, I think is no
not meat, is peas pudding, which is basically the food
that kept European peasants alive for two thousand years. We
call it hummers.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Did so because it was easy to raise and produce
large quantities. Why was it so central.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, food was always a difficulty. You have to feed
yourself through the winter. You need ingredients that are accessible,
and beans are easy to grow and easy to process.
I think it's simply the availability of the ingredients, and we.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Forget that prior to the discovery of the New World, we
didn't have potatoes in the Old World, and so potatoes
gradually became the food of choice for poor people because
they're easy to raise.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I think it's one of Oocher's great regrets that he
was born and lived before the discovery of the potato.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I want to ask you about how you approach this.
You've written a number of smaller sets of books, but
you've written two really long series where you really see
the character and you see their development, and do you
realize when you're starting that it's going to be I
think one of those now what nineteen or twenty volumes
(05:00):
about the Napoleonic era.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
I think they are twenty three, now twenty three.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
This is I guess number what fourteen in the Utrix series.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
I think it is. Yes, I think I knew when
I began Utred that it was going to be a series,
because I knew it was a long story. I certainly
knew that about Sharp, that if Sharp was going to
fight his way right through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,
it had to be a long series. Even so, I
never ever thought it would be as long as it's
turned out to be, and it may yet turn out
(05:30):
to be longer. I haven't given up on him. Utred
is the same. I haven't totally given up on Utred.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
You have coming out in about six months or so,
you'll have another Sharp's novel coming.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Out, Yes, calld Sharp's Command that comes out. I think
in January.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
You manage to go back and find new niches in
their lives that give you an excuse for the next round.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I leave gapped.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Look as a fan, I have to say, I find
myself literally getting involved in their evolution.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, that's very good, you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Know, watching them grow and evolve, and the fact that
the same person could take somebody as a very young
person as you do even more with Utra than you
do as Sharp, and sort of grow with them. But
I am really astounded both at the way you have
shaped these characters over time so that they have a
natural evolution, but also parallel to that and much harder,
(06:27):
or at least as art. You have a knack for
writing stories that your use of English is remarkable and
you just get people in there your natural storyteller. Now
is that also true just orally or is that only
when you're writing.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think it's mostly true when I'm writing. I don't know.
I really don't know. I think, yeah, I'm going to
say it's mostly true when I'm writing.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When I was an undergraduate of Memory, I had a
medieval history professor named George Kutnaugh who said one day
he actually had no idea what was going on in
terms of newspapers because he was busy thinking about the
fourteenth century, and when he woke up in the morning
he was in the middle of the fourteenth century. And
I have a little bit of a sense here that
(07:10):
these are living stories to you.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
No, I know exactly how he feels. I mean, if
I'm writing a book about the fourteenth century, which I
actually am at the moment, then when I wake up,
I'm thinking about it. When I take the dog for
a walk, I'm thinking about it. I mean, it's you
live in that period. But as for the storytelling, I
always think that the great joy of what I do
is that every day I sit down and I write,
(07:34):
and I haven't a clue what's going to happen. I
don't know how the book is going to end. I
don't know how the chapter I'm writing is going to end.
And the joy of reading a good novel is to
find out what happens. And for me, the joy of
writing one is to find out what happens. And I
think that's the clue.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Do you literally not know? I mean, when you start
one of these stories, do you really not know the end?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I really don't. I mean, if it's one of the sharps,
because most of those are built round and the great
battles that the Duke of Wellington fought in Spain and Portugal,
I mean, if it was take one example, sharp sword,
I know it's going to end at the Battle of Salamanca,
but how Sharp gets there and what's going to be
at stake for him at that battle, I don't know.
(08:16):
And very often, certainly this is true in the Utra books.
I'd get to chapter twelve and think, I haven't a
clue how this book is going to end, and just
keep writing is the answer. And it's very frustrating because
you suddenly find out how it's going to end, and
you think, I've now got to go back and change
everything in the book to make sure this ending works.
But it does work in the end.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
But I've had some novelists tell me that their characters
inform them. They suddenly develop their own logic, in their
own patterns. You're almost transcribing them rather than inventing them.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, they make decisions which often I dislike, but I
let them do it because that's what they want to do.
And it's extraordinary. I mean, in the Sharp books, Sharp,
who is an inveterate enemy of the French in all
the books, ends up marrying a frenchwoman and living in France.
I never intended him to do that. He just did
(09:11):
it on his own, and as far as I know,
he's still there and very happy, and I think that's
actually rather fun when characters dictate to you what they
want to do.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You do have a legitimate tie to Ughtred, if I
remember correctly, through a very distant relative of yours.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
He's a distant ancestor of mine. Yes, indeed he is,
and he claimed ancestry from the god Odin, so I
think I can claim ancestry from Odin too, which is
rather nice thought.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So you were currently Odin's writer, That's one way to
think of it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I hadn't thought of that, but yes, why not? Was that?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
A part of what got you into Haughtred was Beeglenberg itself?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yes, it was. I had long wanted to write a
series of novels that described the creation of England because
I realized that although I received a very good education
in Britain, I hadn't a clue how England had actually
come to be. But I didn't know quite how to
tell that story. And then I discovered that I was
descended from this great warrior Utred of Bebenberg, and I thought,
(10:16):
that's it. I'll tell his story because he was alive
at that time. Now we know very little about him.
I mean everything I put in the books is fiction.
I mean, I've given the poor man a much more
exciting life than he probably led. But that was the key.
The key to it was discovering that I was descended
from this Saxon warrior.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Damon Brog itself is open now to the public, isn't.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It It is. It's called Bambrough Castle and it's a
magnificent place. The castle we see today was mostly rebuilt
in the nineteenth century, but it's still an extraordinary place,
built on this volcanic plug of rock on the Northumbrian coast,
and it wasn't until it was battered by artillery that
it actually fell. And it was an enormous fortress that
(11:02):
resisted the vikings and lasted right through history. And it's
still there and open to visitors and well worth a visit.
It's an extraordinary place.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And it also resisted the Scots it did.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Indeed, it was the favorite place where you imprisoned Scots
because they couldn't get out and they couldn't be rescued.
King David the Second of Scotland ended up for a
time there before he was sent to the Tower of London.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
One of the things that struck me is Historically, I've
often always identified al For the Great with the development
of England or engla Land as you called it in
that period, But in fact there's like three or four
generations of fighting to solidify the ability of the English
(12:04):
to govern the southern two thirds of the kingdom.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yes, I mean Alfred. You can credit Alfred with the
idea of England or Englandland. He was an extraordinary man,
and while he was king the English, the Saxon suffered
the biggest reverse when the Danes the Vikings really succeeded
in just about capturing the whole island except for a
little patch of the west country, and Alfred rebounded from
(12:30):
that to defeat them. But it was his son Edward
and his grandson Athelstan who actually made and his daughter
indeed Ethelflayd, who created what we now call England. But
all they were doing was building his dream. And it
was Alfred's dream of a united Saxon country that became England.
(12:51):
So he certainly deserves the epithet the Great, and without him,
I'm not sure it would have happened.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I was very struck in the TV series. I thought
that the person who played Alfred was really convincing.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
He was wonderful. David Dawson, he was absolutely splendid. And
because I had to follow real history, I felt that
some of the life went from the books when Alfred died,
because without Alfred to bounce off, Ughtred was rather rootless,
but he kept going.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
There are enough challenges from the concept of England to
the reality of England. Your description of the Ultimate Battle,
which I didn't realize. We're not totally sure where the
battle took place when the three armies came.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
We are now, we are now. There's a wonderful scholar
in Charleston, South Carolina called Michael Livingstone who has become
really the world's greatest expert on where battles took place,
and he's extraordinarily clever. But the real credit for discovering
the battle site goes to a group of amateur archaeologists
in Britain who discovered the site. It's on the wirrald
(13:56):
near Liverpool, and Michael almost immediately visited and confirmed their discovery.
So we do know now where Brunenberg was fought, but
for hundreds of years the battle site was lost, and
indeed the battle itself was almost forgotten, and yet after
Hastings it's probably the most important battle fought on British soil.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, that's what I was struck by in the novel
where you deal with that. I mean, here's this extraordinary
moment when all these armies come together in one last
desperate effort to stop the English, and they easily could
have won.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
They could and should in many ways they should have won.
It was Athelstan, Alfred's grandson who led the so called English.
He would have said he led the West Saxons. And
it was a brutal, horrible battle. It was one of
these battles of the shield Wall, which are almost unthinkable today.
I mean, when you are within three or four feet
of your enemy, you can smell him, and you're hacking
(14:53):
at each other with lead weighted axes and swords and spears.
They were gruesome battles. Brunenberg was an enormous battle which
ended up in a total victory for the Saxons.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And at that point it sort of settles down. But
I mean, the truth is English history is pretty violent
for virtue its entire period.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So is American mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Listen, I plead guilty. We've had our share of conflict.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
But the making of England was really a war. It
was a brutal war between the Viking invaders and the
Saxons trying to defend their own territory and retake their territory,
and very little of it was peaceful. It's marked by
a series of battles and it was indeed very gruesome
and very bloody.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I want to see if I've captured where you're coming from.
My reading is that Ughtred is attracted to the Norse life,
but ultimately as loyal to the English. He always ends
up being loyal to the concept of England.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
He does, but he was brought up by Danes, and
he actually loves the day. He marries a Dane and
they appeal to him. He likes their lifestyle, he likes
their attitude to life and death, and in many ways
he fights like a Dane. There was a kind of
feeling among the Saxons that it took three Saxons to
(16:16):
defeat one Dane, when Utred basically says, well, in that case,
we'd better fight like the Danes, and he does. He's
a Viking at heart, but he's a Viking who's on
our side, and there were Danes who fought in athols
Stan's army. By this time, they'd settled in England, they'd
married Saxon women, and they felt as English as the English,
and quite a lot of them were in athols Stan's
(16:37):
army fighting against their Danish and Irish enemies.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
One of the things that striking, and I'm just now
watching a movie called Redbad, which I think is either
Danish or Norwegian, but it's about the degree to which
Christianity is dissolving Paganism. So the Christianity becomes a major
weapon in terms of unifying England and in terms of
(17:03):
ultimately undermining Viking civilization.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I think that's absolutely true, just as it undermines Anglo
Saxon culture. And Ughtred is stubbornly a pagan. I don't
think that's out of any great belief in pagan gods.
It's basically to annoy Alfred, and having taken that position,
he sticks to it. But the war was more than
just a political struggle. It really was a religious struggle,
(17:28):
and Alfred saw it very much in those terms. He
believed that if a Dane converted to Christianity, then that
he became a friend, not an enemy.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So in a very raal sense, the missionary priests are
a significant part of Alfred's grand strategy.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
They are, indeed, and converting Danish rulers of Viking leaders
to Christianity was vitally important because once they were converted,
he believed they would turn all their followers into Christians,
who in turn would unite with the Saxon Christians.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
The process of all that, you have moments it's a
little hard to know who's up and who's done. I mean,
you have King Canute, for example, who has an enormous
influence and is one of the strongest leaders, in fact,
probably the strongest leader in the North in his lifetime.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Oh indeed, he comes a little after Pure and it's
Canute indeed who is responsible for taking Bebenberg away from
the family. But Canute was an enormously successful and great leader,
and he is often called Canute the Great too, who
takes England and makes it part of the Viking Empire.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
When you look at all this, I'm fascinated that you
have managed the nutrient's feast to weave together historical stories
where you're just a great storyteller worth literally a cookbook.
It's a brilliant concept. I don't know very many people
who could have pulled this off. It just struck me
that the de gree to which the Anglo Saxon diet
(18:58):
of that period could be translated into modern meals, well.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
That's what Suzanne did. I mean, Suzanne was determined to
make them accessible that if you can go to almost
any supermarket, you can buy the ingredients and then she
tells you how to prepare them, and it's actually rather
a healthy diet.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
They didn't have processed sugar for one thing.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
There's no process that you had to have honey instead,
so there's no sugar in it. And okay, it can
be quite meat heavy, but I like that, so I'm
not going to complain.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Did they actually have that much meat?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
They certainly had a lot, but not enough to feed
everybody sort of thing. I'm sure most peasants kept a pig,
and November was known as the month of slaughter, where
you slaughtered your livestock, just keeping a few alive to
breed the following year, and you would then salt that
meat down or smoke the meat, and that would feed
you through the winter. But if you had one or
(19:54):
two pigs, that didn't provide that much meat for the
whole winter. Meanwhile, the aristocracy, like Utre himself, would probably
eat meat year round because they were privileged.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Now, you also make a point that bread and rolls
and that sort of product are very central to their
whole dial.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Bread is very, very central, and according to Suzanne who
has tried cooking some of it, it does taste a
bit different, tastes rather rustic. The one thing it doesn't
have in it is chips of stone, which they would
have had because as the millwheels ground away, some stone
would chip off and it would end up in the
flour and you'd bite down on bread and there goes
(20:35):
another molar.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
How's he going to say? I think most modern people
would find that a bit tricky. But baking, as I
remember correctly, one of the points you make is I
think literally having a baker goes back to at least
two thousand BC, so bread has been integral.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
They have the oven, I mean a bread oven is
not easy to make, and right through until at least
Tudor time, it was often there was just one baker
in town and you took your pies to him to
have them baked. You could make a pie, but you
didn't have your own oven, so you'd walk it down
the street and give it to the baker and he'd
charge you a penny or two and bake your pie.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
The meat itself was usually cooked over an open fire,
wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yes, it was open fire, or it was braised. I
mean they had good cooking pans, but yes, it's opened.
A lot of it is open fire cooking.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Would they have had metal cooking pans?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh, yes, yes, I mean, and we've discovered a lot
of them. They had metal cooking pans and metal spits
and enormous cauldrons.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
I've started reading the gallows for Sharp command your ability
to go from Anglo Saxon food around eight hundred and
then jumping to eighteen twenty or eighteen ten. They're totally
different worlds, totally different rhythms.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
They are. But I've lived with Sharp now for forty years,
so I mean, picking Sharp up again was not difficult.
I mean, he lurks at the back of my head
all the time, and I've always wanted to write one
more story of Sharp in Spain, and this was it,
and he sprang to life really quite easily.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well thanks to you. I ended up one day touring
the walls of Taurus VDRA with a local expert and
just getting a feel for that. I think Wellington's campaign
is extraordinary at every level, starting in India.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
He was an absolutely extraordinary man. I mean, for my money,
they're certainly the greatest general in British history and probably
in European history. The French would disagree, but then Waterloo
happened and they can't argue with that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I teach a class for major generals, and I always
tell him the story about the head of the horse
Guards the British Army Headquarters writing Wellington and saying we're
sending you a new division commander. It's Lord So and so.
You will have heard rumors that he is crazy, but
when they released him from the asylum, they assured me
that he was fine, although I must say he looked
(23:21):
a little wild in the eye when I said goodbye
to him at the porch. And I just tell him,
this is one of his three division commanders, so don't
tell me you have a problem.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Who then went on to fail spectacularly. Yes, he was
as mad as a hatter.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, and so Wellington had to run the army and
run that division because he had no commander who could
actually run. It's one of those marvelous moments that's sort
of hard to explain. Yeah, I may have told you
one time when we did a podcast, but I really
got turned on to you by General Jim Mattis. We
were having dinner one night and he said he had
(23:54):
never understood Waterloo until he read your version, and he
said he could understand it. And that led me into
Sharps and then everything. Since then, you say you had
a four star general Secretary of Defense who thought you
wrote the best single explanation of Waterloo. I thought that
was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Waterloo is just a great story. I mean, it is
an extraordinary story because although the battle begins around eleven
o'clock in the morning, by about half past seven that night,
you really couldn't tell who was going to win. Which
is why when I wrote my only nonfiction book, which
is the story of Waterloo, it felt in many ways
like writing a novel, simply because the story was on
(24:34):
the knife edge all the way through until the last chapter.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
If the Prussians had not shown up, could Wellington have
stood or would he have been forced back?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Probably forced back because obviously Napoleon could have thrown more
troops at him. I mean, Napoleon made so many mistakes
that day that it's very difficult. I mean, I'm told
by people who wargame, but it's almost impossible for the
British to win on the war gaming tables. But you know,
raw factor is that they did.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
One of the things I'm curious about when you stay
with Sharps for a second, somehow this relatively small professional
army had an enormous sense of morale and pride. They
were willing to take on you, Jode, just because they
were who.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
They were, Yes, they were, and it was partly, I
think because they were so superbly led. I mean a
sergeant wrote after the wars, all we ever ask is
for Wellington's leaders. We know we'd be well led, we
know we'd be well fed, and we know we'd win.
And Wellington himself reckoned that army was the finest army
(25:39):
probably in all Britain's history, and he only wished he
had it with him at Waterloo, which he didn't, of course,
but the same thing applied. They had total faith in him,
And I mean he once said that the presence of
Napoleon on a battlefield was worth at least ten thousand men.
Some people say he said forty thousand men, but I
would say the presence of Wellington on a battlefield was
(26:00):
probably worth the same. They had total faith in him.
He was a general who never lost a battle.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Now you cover this in the very early sharpest books.
To understand Wellington and the Peninsula, you have to look
at Wellesley as he was then in India. That the
Indian experience shapes him in a way that no other
British general has been shaped.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Absolutely, he learned his trade really in India. And in
later life he was asked what was he most proud
of and he answered assay, which was at one of
the battles in India, And to say, he took an
enormous risk and threw his small army really into a
position where it could have been completely defeated and won.
And he was incredibly proud of his strategy on that day.
(26:45):
And he's often called a great defensive general, which he was,
and this is really an insult to him, which the
French rather liked. But in fact he was also a
great attacking general, as he proved a to say, and
forever after Salamancaca was an extraordinary attacking battle in which
he attacked and, as somebody said, destroyed forty thousand frenchmen
(27:06):
in forty minutes.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think that's the one where he's sitting on the horse, yes,
holding the chicken leg, and he suddenly realized that they're split,
and he throws the chicken leg and says, I have him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yes, he is Marmonte, perdue monche Aliva Marmont, of my
dear Aliva. Who is this Spanish liaison officer? Marmont is lost?
And he chucks the chicken leg over his shoulder and
gallops after the third division.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But you know your description of a say, I'll just
say this for all of our listeners every rudder three times,
because you capture the Scottish battalions or the Scott's battalions,
the way they fought, and the discipline and the odds
they fought against, and the degree to which at some
point one side of the other is going to have
(27:52):
its morale break and the side that has its morale
break is doomed.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Is doomed. Yes, And it was interesting in the Scottish
Italian One of them got cut up very badly and
an Indian farmer when I visited at Say, told me
about finding the bones when he plowed the field, and
he said they were very big men, and I thought, okay,
but I doubted that they were any larger than the
rest of the army. But it turned out he was right,
(28:18):
and I came across figures that showed that Scottish soldiers
on the whole were three or four inches taller than
the English and Welsh soldiers. And the Scots were enormously brave.
And it's more than morale, it's also discipline. It's an
iron discipline. As one battalion commander said to his men
at the Battle of Waterloo, as long as you stand,
(28:39):
you'll live. But if just one of you turns and
runs away, were all dead. So just stand, and they did.
And the morning of Waterloo Napoleon was worned. It had
never fought against British infantry, and he was worn by
his generals that they were incredibly tough to beat. And
he rather dismissed and said, just because you've all been
(29:01):
defeated by Wellington, you think he's a great general. But
I tell you he's a bad general and his soldiers
are bad soldiers.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
There are two things about that whole French relationship with
Wellington I've never fully understood. The first is that the
British figure out, because the French are so reliant on
their artillery that if you just stay slightly behind the
military crest, virtually all the French cannonade will be irrelevant.
It'll be noisy, but it's not going to hurt anybody.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
It would hurt a few, but not many.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
But the French never seem to understand this.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, they didn't.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I mean, in all those battles, Wellington does exactly the
same thing. They're just slightly behind the military crest, the
bombardment's over, and.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He tells them are to lie down so that a
cannonball or shell that skims the crest won't hit them
in the head. And there's a rather untactful moment before
the Battle of Waterloo when Wellington visits Blucha, the Prussian general,
and sees his men lined up on the slopes at
len Yi and says, that's not very sensible. Why don't
(30:05):
you take them back over the crest where they can't
be hit by the French artillery. And I think it
was nisenhow who was an aid to camp to Blueesche.
Rather cavalier said, our men like to see the enemy. Well,
his men did see the enemy and died. They were
cut down by French artillery two days later at Waterloo.
The same thing did not happen to Wellington, because he'd
(30:27):
retired them over the crest. You know, it's the oldest
trick in the book, hyder men from the enemy.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
And the second part of that is that consistently for
the entire Peninsula campaign up through Waterloo, the British ability
to shoot from the line against the column, so that
the British given anything, not even parody. If they're only
on numbers, say four to one, they're actually going to
bring far more muskets to bear than the French.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Are yes, And the British were the only army to
actually practice with live ammunition. It sounds extrame ordinary, but
I guess ammunition was precious and short, and the others didn't.
And the French relied heavily on the column, which is
a very tight formation. But nobody rather in the middle
of the column can actually fire a musket. All they
can do is just keep marching forward while the guys
(31:15):
in the front two ranks and down the side files
may be able to fire, and they're faced by this
very thin line only too deep of red coats, where
every man can fire. And the French did realize this,
I mean, they were not completely stupid, and they developed
a tactic to get over it, which was to advance
in column because it was a quick way to advance,
(31:36):
but just before you got to within firing range you
deployed into line. But that didn't work either. They tried
that at Waterloo and it didn't work at all. So
the line versus column is a trophy of the Peninsula
Wall and indeed of Waterloo.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
It's a fascinating process. And of course the other thing
is you have to have pretty good logistics to have
live fire practice.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
You do, and Wellington was a master of logistics, which
is really that's one of the things he learned in
India how to keep his armies supplied, and throughout his career,
logistics is a key to almost everything. I mean, his
worst moments were in the retreat from Burgos, where logistics
fell apart because of the mistake of a quartermaster, and
(32:22):
that was probably his most miserable time in all his career.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Then tarding a lesson not to let it happen.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yes, he blamed himself. If something went wrong, it was
his fault.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I just want to say your new book, Utred's Feast
is about as creative and unique an approach as I've
seen in a series. Anybody who has not started either
the series involving Utrid or the series involving Sharp, you
have a wonderful experience ahead of you. This is one
of the great novelists of our time. He writes just
(32:54):
remarkably useful books where you just learn a lot of
stuff while also being entertained. Bernard, I really want to
thank you, as I think you know, I get great
joy out of doing a podcast with you because I'm
so impressed and fascinated with your abilities, and I really
appreciate you taking the time to talk with us both
about the art of being a writer and about Utred's Feast.
(33:17):
And in April, Sharp's Command will be coming out and
hopefully we'll have a chance to talk again.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's always a pleasure and a privilege to talk to you,
mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Thank you to my guest, Bernard Cornwell. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Utridz Feast on
our show page. At newsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced
by Gingers three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is
Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(33:50):
to the team at Gingish three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of neut World consign up for my three freeweekly
columns at Gingrish three sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
newt Gingrich. This is neutrald
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