Little-known English history comes alive in Cornwell's 'Kingdom'

The Last Kingdom, By Bernard Cornwell, HarperCollins, 333 pp, $25.95

The year is 867, and Uhtred is almost 11 when, as the Anglo-Saxon protagonist of "The Last Kingdom" recalls in later years, "it was the first time I ever went to war. And I have never ceased."

In historic period and emotional complexity, this is arguably a more broadly imagined world than Bernard Cornwell has offered in his 36 previous novels.

The popular Sharpe series -- now at 20 titles -- dealing with the exploits of infantry captain Richard Sharpe is grounded in campaigns of the Napoleonic wars, and the novels' accuracy can be researched and rechecked in the historic accounts, as can Cornwell's chronicles of the American Civil War. And his Arthurian novels build upon legends familiar to most readers.

But the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of late ninth-century England and their fight against Danish invasions are unfamiliar, specialist territory.

At the time of Cornwell's story, two rival cultures are fighting for control of England -- two cultures that in many respects are more alike than dissimilar.

Originally invaders themselves, the Anglo-Saxons have turned settlers with walled towns (some inherited from even earlier Roman invaders). The Danes -- Cornwell, following early English writers, uses that term for the people in preference to the activity-describing "Viking" -- come as invaders, but even at this early period are seeking land on which to settle.

It is Cornwell's singular accomplishment in "The Last Kingdom" to have brought forward with a solid context and constant vitality those times and conflicts.

And in Uhtred, the son of an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, there is an engaging character, himself conflicted, to carry the reader through the ensuing clashes of culture and of arms.

Here are the bare bones of that story.

Uhtred's father was killed in war and Uhtred, taken prisoner, was adopted and raised by Ragnar, a Danish leader. After a series of battles -- described by Cornwell with obvious relish for the ax-hacking and the spear-thrusting -- the Danes win control over most of England, even Uhtred's native Northumbria. The "last kingdom" left outside Danish control is Wessex, out of which comes the leader known as Alfred the Great.

At a raid into East Anglia, Ragnar tells Uhtred that here, "[he] will learn Viking ways."

"We came shrieking from the half-light. We were a nightmare in the dawn: men in leather with iron helmets . . . men with axes, swords and spears. The folk in that place had no weapons and no armor . . . and they were not ready for us." The few men who tried to make a stand by a village church were slaughtered, and the Danes burst into the church. "The priest was in front of the altar and he cursed Ragnar in Latin as the Dane stalked up the small nave, and the priest was still cursing when Ragnar disemboweled him."

Uhtred is given the task of burning the thatch-roofed houses and learns that a society that thrives by raiding and plundering must "start [its] killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal."

It is after this raid that Brida, a feisty Anglo-Saxon girl of Uhtred's age, is taken prisoner and becomes his companion in various adolescent adventures, and even in battle, for she "enjoyed chaos."

A round of battles and the killing of Ragnar as the result of a blood feud bring Uhtred and Cornwell's story -- to Alfred.

Uhtred recalls that he had "been a Dane while Ragnar lived . . . but Ragnar was dead and I had no other friends among the Danes. I had no friends among the English for that matter." But, he recalls, "the English were my folk and I think I had known that ever since [a ferocious battle] where for the first time I saw Englishmen beat Danes."

"Destiny is all," he recalls, voicing a theme that runs constantly through "The Last Kingdom." The spinners -- the figures in Scandinavian mythology who were regarded as mistresses of fate -- had touched him, and now "[he] would respond to their touch."

On the eve of going into battle with Alfred's forces against the Danes, Uhtred feels that "the three spinners were making my fate. They were thickening the threads, twisting them tighter, making me into what I am."

Alfred, as Cornwell writes in a historical note, "was responsible for saving Wessex, and ultimately, English society from the Danish assaults." And, the reader will be happy to hear, the story is not complete with "The Last Kingdom," and Cornwell "[intends] Uhtred to be involved in the whole story."