Uhtred, despite his inclination otherwise, repeatedly fights and schemes to bring about Alfred the Great's dream of uniting all English speakers in one realm over the course of a long life.
Cornwell subsequently posted a note on his web site that "The Warrior Chronicles/Saxon Stories had been renamed The Last Kingdom series".
[1] In an interview with Emerson College, Cornwell said: Years ago, when I was at university, I discovered Anglo-Saxon poetry and became hooked on that strange and often melancholy world.
For some reason the history of the Anglo-Saxons isn't much taught in Britain (where I grew up) and it struck me as weird that the English really had no idea where their country came from.
When he was 58, Cornwell met his birth father, William Outhred (or Oughtred), for the first time while on a book tour in Vancouver, Canada.
[2] He learned the story of his own descent from the Saxons who possessed the fortress of Bebbanburg (now Bamburgh Castle), including the historical Uhtred the Bold.
[2] Uhtred is the second son of a Saxon lord who rules from the nearly impregnable fortress at Bebbanburg (modern-day Bamburgh) in the kingdom of Northumbria.
Uhtred abandons Christianity in favour of Danish pagan beliefs, such as the gods Thor and Odin, and Valhalla.
Cornwell provides a "Historical Note" at the end of each novel in which he clarifies which characters and events are based on actual history and what liberties he took with them.
This offers the reader a balanced picture of the tumultuous times, when it was uncertain whether there would be an England or a "Daneland" in the southern and central parts of the island of Britain.
[3] Bernard Cornwell mentioned in the historical notes at the end of The Lords of the North, the third novel, that he intended to continue writing The Saxon Stories.
[2] On 5 March 2020, Cornwell announced on social media that the 13th book, War Lord, would be the final novel in the series.
In July 2014, the BBC announced that production would begin in autumn 2014 on a television adaptation of The Saxon Stories, to be titled The Last Kingdom.
"I don’t think so, [Game of Thrones] is fantasy, unless the appeal is brutal men in chain mail and leather beating the shit out of each other ...