Biography

Bernard Cornwell (born 23 February 1944) is an English-American author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. He has also written The Saxon Stories, a series of 13 novels about the making of England.

He has written historical novels primarily based on English history, in five series, and one series of contemporary thriller novels. A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how they match or differ from history, and what one might see at the modern sites of the events described. He wrote a nonfiction book on the battle of Waterloo, in addition to the fictional story of the famous battle in the Sharpe series. Two of the historical novel series have been adapted for television: the Sharpe television series by ITV and The Last Kingdom by BBC. He lives in the US with his wife, alternating between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina. Cornwell was born in London in 1944. His father was Canadian airman William Oughtred and his mother was Englishwoman Dorothy Cornwell, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted and brought up in Thundersley, Essex, by the Wiggins family; they were members of the Peculiar People, a strict sect of pacifists who banned frivolity of all kinds, and even medicine up to 1930. Reacting to being raised by Christian Fundamentalists, he grew up rejecting all religions and became an atheist.After his adoptive father died, he changed his last name by deed poll from Wiggins to Cornwell, his birth mother's maiden name. Prior to that, he had used Bernard Cornwell as a pen name. He met his father for the first time when he was 58, after telling a journalist on a book tour, "what I wanted to see in Vancouver was my real father." There he met his half-siblings, with whom he shares many traits, and learned his genealogy.On the basis of his father's surname being Oughtred, he believes he is a descendant of Uhtred the Bold, upon whom he based the Saxon Stories book series.Cornwell was sent to Monkton Combe School in Somerset. He read history at University College London between 1963 and 1966 and worked as a teacher after graduating. He attempted to enlist in the British armed services at least three times but was rejected on the grounds of myopia.

Following his work as a teacher, Cornwell joined the BBC's Nationwide and was later promoted to head of current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland. He then joined Thames Television as editor of Thames News.His first marriage ended in divorce in the 1970s. He met his second wife, Judy, in 1978 in Edinburgh while he was working for BBC Northern Ireland; she was a travel agent from the US and the mother of three children from a previous marriage. He relocated to the United States in 1979 after marrying her. He was unable to get a United States Permanent Resident Card (green card), so he started writing novels, as this did not require a work permit. He later became an American citizen.