Mantel’s a Stradivarius – I’m something you get at Walmart

With a new book out, historical novelist Bernard Cornwell

– of Sharpe fame – tells Duncan White why literary acclaim doesn’t bother him

‘Whisky?” bellows Bernard Cornwell as he emerges from his Cape Cod beach-house. While he has a reputation for liking the finer things in life, this seems a bracing way to start the day. I’m not sure I can stomach a sharpener so soon after breakfast. What would Sharpe, hero of the author’s muchprotagonist loved Napoleonic novels, do? Probably ask for a double. Cornwell grins. “Whisky?” he shouts again, this time looking under his truck. “There you are!” Relief – it’s the name of his dog.

It’s a bright, crisp New England morning and Cornwell suggests we chat on the sun-drenched terrace. Not all vices are abjured: he smokes at a ratio of three cigars to one cup of coffee as the seagulls caw overhead.

The house is perched above Stage Harbor and the view is outstanding. In the garden sits a cannon from the time of the American Revolutionary War. There could be no more Cornwellian decor. It is the house that Sharpe built – or at least one of them. There is also the residence in Chatham, and a winter place in Charleston, South Carolina. Not many novelists can afford this kind of real estate, but then Cornwell is not just any novelist.

He started writing in 1980, the year he left his job as a BBC producer and moved to the United States to be with his American wife, Judy, and his books – more than 50 of them, mostly steeped in the history of warfare and bloodletting and often written at the rate of two a year – have been translated into more than 20 languages. His following is truly global. “I don’t understand it,” he says. “For some reason, I’m hugely popular in Brazil. When I last went to Rio it was like being a rock star. I needed security to get me into the venue where I was giving a talk.”

He has written books set in Arthurian Britain, during the Hundred Years’ War, and during the American Civil War. More recently he has created a series about the reign of King Alfred, centred on fictional Saxon lord Uhtred, which has been adapted for the small screen as The Last Kingdom.

He knows how to weave his raw material into good old-fashioned yarns about heroism and war. “I write adventure stories,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with that.” None the less, his new book, Fools

and Mortals, set in the raucous theatrical world of Elizabethan London, is a departure. The is Richard Shakespeare, brother of the playwright and an actor in his company, and the story is about the first performance of A Midsummer

Night’s Dream. “I’m sure my fans are going to hate it,” he said. “Nobody dies and it has fairies in it!”

While we know something about some of Shakespeare’s other siblings, nobody knows anything about Richard other than he was once fined 12 pence for not attending church. He is a gift to a historical novelist. Cornwell laughs – belly laughs – at the Bernard Cornwell: ‘I’m not trying to dissect the human condition’ idea that writing about Shakespeare might signal literary ambition on his part. “That’s not my game. Look, certain people are shooting at a very small target from a long way off and even a near miss can be interesting. I’m shooting at a barn door from five paces with a shotgun. I’m not trying to dissect the human condition.”

Yes, but highbrow historical fiction such as Wolf Hall receives heaps of acclaim. Is he not interested in that? “Well, Hilary Mantel is a goddess! She’s a Stradivarius and I’m something you get at Walmart.”

For all his self-deprecation, Cornwell takes his role as a historical novelist seriously. He can invent Sharpe but he is faithful to what happened at the Battle of Waterloo.

“This is why I have never been tempted to write a fantasy novel,” he explains. “Creating a whole world can be marvellous. Just look at what JK Rowling did. And George [RR Martin] with the Game of Thrones books. He creates a world that is entirely believable. For all the dragons, George is drawing on the War of the Roses. That’s why so many readers want to read them.

“But then you get novels where it is done poorly and I have no time for that. I read one [The Guns of the South] in which Robert E Lee is given a crate of AK-47S at Gettysburg. Please! Or that stupid movie where the

‘Historical novelists are gatekeepers to history. We have a duty not to get it too wrong’

Americans have F-16s at Pearl Harbor. That’s just wish fulfilment.

“I do think being attentive to history has never been more important. Look at Trump: he has no conception of history. None at all. Historical novelists are gatekeepers to history; we have a duty not to get it too wrong.”

Getting history wrong can take on sinister aspects. “Some years ago, a white supremacist group in England had a quote from one of my Uhtred books on their home page. I wrote and asked them to take it off, which they did, but not before they had given all their members my email address. For the next couple of years I’d get flamed all the time. I was quite upset, as you can imagine.”

Those who make assumptions about Cornwell’s personal politics based on his interest in military history might be surprised to discover he has a Bernie Sanders sticker on his truck bumper. He follows American politics assiduously. “You open up The New York Times every morning, wondering what it is going to be today. It’s like political porn – you can’t take your eyes off it.”

When it comes to British politics he feels torn. He is a US citizen and follows Washington more closely than Westminster. Yet his books are a testament to his continued interest in Britain. “We go back three times a year and it still feels like home. People are always asking me about Brexit, and my standard answer is that I no longer have a dog in that fight. But that’s maybe not quite true.

“I love England dearly but from here it looks like a f---ing mess. But if the alternative is Jeremy Corbyn, then God help us. The Labour Party has some wonderful people in it but Corbyn’s worship of Chavez and Maduro is enough to put me off. It feels like we are in a period of enormous change. Clearly May won’t last, but what are the alternatives? One of the most important things I was ever told about leadership is that it is not about IQ, it is about judgment. And I can’t see any judgment in the leadership of either party.”

Could he ever see himself setting a book in the present? “No! I too much enjoy just being a spectator. I need the distance of history to really get into a subject. I envy the historians of 50 years hence who will write about this ship of fools in Washington. There will be no shortage of material.”

Nor does he have any interest in writing about himself. Cornwell’s mother gave him up for adoption after a fling with a Canadian airman during the Second World War. His adoptive parents were deeply religious and subjected him to terrible abuse.

“I was brought up in a puritan household that was cruel. But they were not cruel people, they were cruel because the Bible taught them to be strict.” Cornwell wrote about his childhood experiences in 2006 for Granta magazine but found it “such a horrible experience” that he doesn’t want to revisit it again.

He is, however, open to new challenges – he wants to write about Restoration theatre next. His productivity is remarkable. He’s writing the 11th instalment of his Saxon series, while another of his novels, The Gallows Thief, is being adapted for TV and he’d like to see Fools and Mortals adapted, too. He might even write one more Sharpe novel. “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. But I do sometimes look at the bookshelves and say to myself ‘where the f--- did all these books come from?’” One more bellow of laughter. “Whisky?” This time I’m pretty sure he’s not talking to the dog.