The drama, she said, was an adaptation of a set of novels by “some chap called Cornwell”.īernard Cornwell makes a cameo in The Last Kingdom season four Filming was due to take place in Hungary, explained Professor Nelson, and she wasn’t keen to travel. “There were certain things in the novels, details that made me think ‘this isn’t quite right’, but I was impressed with Cornwell’s engagement with historical records and places,” he tells Den of Geek over Zoom, pointing out his editions of the Saxon Stories on the bookshelves behind him.Ī decade after reading the first of the books, Lavelle was contacted by fellow historian Dame Janet ‘Jinty’ Nelson, to ask if he’d be interested in advising on a new historical TV drama. Lavelle read them all, delighting in their inclusion of real historical events and use of a central character whose divided loyalties allowed a perspective into the very different worlds of Saxon and Dane. In the following years, Cornwell published another, and then another and another. It told the story of Uhtred, a fictional 9th century Northumbrian warrior raised by Vikings who, despite a conflicted relationship with the king of Wessex, became Alfred’s military tactician. The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell was the first in what was then known as the Saxon Stories saga. After completing his PhD in Early Medieval History, Ryan Lavelle picked up a novel dramatising the events of King Alfred’s early reign.
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