Bernard Cornwell

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a writer. In a series of highly popular and scrupulously researched historical novels, he tells the story of an English soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. His hero, Richard Sharp, has risen from the ranks and serves under Wellington in India, Spain, and of course at Waterloo. Sharpe's creator has experienced a life that sounds as though it comes from a novel. The illegitimate son of a wartime romance, he was adopted and brought up by religious fundamentalists who banned television, medicine and fun from the house. He rebelled, became a television producer and then left for America with the woman he'd married on the promise that he'd provide for them both by writing. And that's exactly what he's done. I'm a storyteller, not a historian, he says. It's not the most difficult thing to do. He is Bernard Cornwell. Not difficult, Bernard, if you have the ability to write, but what you have to do is spot the gap in the market for fictionalised military history, I dare say.

Bernard Cornwell1:24

I guess that's true. I mean, years and years ago I read all the Hornblur. When I'd finished Hornblur, there's no more to read. I mean, C.S. Forrester tragically only wrote eleven. So I I went off and found the non-fiction histories and through those I discovered these amazing stories about Wellington's army and and I haunted the bookshops thinking somebody must write this series, Hornblur on Dry Land. And of course nobody did. And and then I thought, well why don't you do it?

Presenter1:44

The crew.

Presenter1:48

But why the fascination with Wellington? Where had that begun, and when?

Bernard Cornwell1:52

I think that the fascination came totally off Hornbleu, and that in turn goes right back to my adopted parents, who who, among other things, disapproved of the military. They they if you were a member of that sect, you had to be a conscientious objector.

Presenter2:04

So it was a kind of rebellion, was it?

Bernard Cornwell2:04

So it was a

Bernard Cornwell2:06

Absolutely.

Presenter2:06

So you weren't allowed toy guns or Roy Rogers outfits or?

Bernard Cornwell2:10

No, no, no, absolutely not, no. Which I'm I'm looking back on it, it seems to me an entirely sensible thing to do is not to let your children sort of grow up with toy kalashnikovs. But of course if you do, like me, grow up without them, then all you want is uh toy kalashnikovs.

Presenter2:11

Yeah.

Presenter2:23

But did you know that you could write? I mean, was that there too?

Bernard Cornwell2:27

I don't think I did know it. When I wrote the first sharp book I had no idea, absolutely no idea, and it's a terrifying thing to do the first book.

Presenter2:30

Oh

Bernard Cornwell2:34

But we must

Presenter2:37

But there must have been something more than that. There must have been, you know, something in you that said, I am going to. I want to run. You have to want to.

Bernard Cornwell2:42

Yes, I'd always wanted to. I'd always wanted to write. I mean, I'd always had the idea that it was better than working, which has actually turned out to be entirely true. But I mean, writing a few sentences for an intro on Nationwide, where we worked, is very different from writing 400 pages of a novel. And the great terror for most people on writing their first novel is actually going the full length. And that was, I think, the biggest problem at the beginning.

Presenter3:07

So what was the catalyst? What brought it all together? You've got the passion for history. You've got the ability to write or think you might have if you could give it a go. What made it happen eventually? Because it didn't happen until your late thirties.

Bernard Cornwell3:18

It happened in my late thirties and I was working in Belfast, and the Northern Irish Tourist Board, in its wisdom, brought some American travel agents to Ulster as a tourist destination. It was crazy. It was insane. It was, I hope it remains the second worst year of the Troubles. But we filmed it.

Bernard Cornwell3:35

And Jeremy Paxman was was one of my reporters, a very young Jeremy Paxman. And I remember that we went to meet these travel agents and a lift door opened and out walked a blonde. And I said to my reporter, I'm going to marry that one. And that was Judy. And she was American, and for family reasons she couldn't live in Britain. And I could go to the States. I had no ties. But I couldn't get a work permit. So I airily said to her, Don't worry, darling. I'll write a book. And well, we're still married and I'm still writing the books.

Presenter4:04

And that was what, twenty five years ago and you've written more than forty books.

Bernard Cornwell4:06

Twenty-five years ago.

Bernard Cornwell4:09

Forty one

Presenter4:10

Okay, let's have your first record.

Bernard Cornwell4:12

Well, the first one is by Forrest Maria.

Bernard Cornwell4:15

Marta Gratii, and it's liturgical, it's one of the most beautiful pieces of church music, and I collect church music, liturgical music, and this is one of my favourites.

Speaker 44:32

But we see to God.

Speaker 45:09

We develop strength enough, strength with me.

Presenter5:25

Part of the Maria Marta Gratiae from Foray's Requiem sung by the Cambridge singers with members of the City of London Sinfonia conducted by John Rutter, and the kind of music, Bernard Cornwell, that your adoptive parents had a deep distaste for, so that's why you like it, is that right?

Bernard Cornwell5:39

I think it's absolutely true that they they absolutely disliked what we'd call smells and bells. They disliked any high church. The peculiar people, for that was what the sect was called, peculiar people chapels were very plain. I mean, in my memory, they're very ugly.

Presenter5:45

Um

Speaker 45:46

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell5:53

I remember my father taking me to Raleigh in Essex. I was about seven years old, and there was a and there still is a memorial in the High Street.

Bernard Cornwell6:01

Two, I think three Protestant martyrs who were burnt by by Queen Mary.

Bernard Cornwell6:06

And he very solemnly told me.

Bernard Cornwell6:08

But one day he said they're going to burn me here.

Bernard Cornwell6:11

I mean it's quite shocking sort of news and and

Presenter6:13

Boop.

Bernard Cornwell6:13

He believed that the the forces of the Pope would join with the forces of the Communists, and there would be this sort of Moscow Rome axis. It had only one aim, which is to extirpate true Protestantism from Britain. So I was brought up to hate the Catholic Church and to hate its liturgy and to hate its uh decorations.

Presenter6:32

Peculiar as in strange people.

Bernard Cornwell6:35

As in separate.

Presenter6:36

As in separate

Bernard Cornwell6:36

It's from Deuteronomy: I will make thee unto me a peculiar people, which just means separate.

Presenter6:41

Mm.

Bernard Cornwell6:41

And in many ways they tried very hard to keep us separate from sinful influences.

Presenter6:41

Yeah.

Presenter6:46

So, how I mean, how did this affect daily life? What was it like living with them?

Bernard Cornwell6:51

I don't remember it fondly, which is sad, because in fact they were actually very good people. But.

Presenter6:56

But

Bernard Cornwell6:57

Yes, they were good people.

Presenter6:57

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell6:59

As fundamentalist Christians often are, they're honest, they're painfully honest, they work to be honest. And as as my real mother said when she saw them, when they came to pick me up for adoption, she said I could see they weren't cuddly.

Bernard Cornwell7:11

And and she was right, they weren't cuddly. But that's you know, I mean, that that's fine. Why should they be cuddly? What my father wanted above all was to save my soul.

Bernard Cornwell7:20

He wanted me to be a born-again Christian.

Presenter7:22

And how was that supposed to happen?

Bernard Cornwell7:25

It was to happen by a process called conversion. Lots of people must have gone through this, where you go to a sort of fundamentalist church and there's a mercy seat at the front, and then the preacher urges you to come forward and give your heart to Jesus. And when it did, something magical happened. It was never really described what this thing was, except it was a sort of a

Bernard Cornwell7:45

Right.

Bernard Cornwell7:46

Epiphany

Bernard Cornwell7:47

And suddenly you'd be happy and your troubles would sort of would would would all roll away, like, you know, pilgrim when he gets to the end of pilgrim's progress.

Bernard Cornwell7:56

Um

Bernard Cornwell7:57

And it never happened.

Bernard Cornwell7:58

I always wanted it. I mean, I always wanted to have this miraculous experience that would.

Presenter8:03

But you'd want it presumably out of fear, would you?

Bernard Cornwell8:05

I think so. It's a it was a very Old Testament religion.

Bernard Cornwell8:10

God was would would punish you.

Presenter8:11

So hell and damnation was where you were destined if you didn't feel the hand of God, as it were.

Bernard Cornwell8:13

If you didn't feel it.

Bernard Cornwell8:17

Yes, yes, you were going to hell, straight to hell. And and my parents, God bless them, believed this, believed this utterly, that they were going to go to heaven and and unless I was converted.

Presenter8:19

Um

Presenter8:24

Uh

Bernard Cornwell8:27

I was gonna go to hell.

Presenter8:29

There were five of you. They adopted five children altogether, didn't they? I mean, uh attempting to save the souls of all of them perhaps was part of the object of adoption.

Bernard Cornwell8:30

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell8:38

I think it was. I think it very much was, certainly on my father's side. I think that he really did see himself as saving souls for Jesus. And I suspect, looking at the five of us, his strike rate was one in five.

Presenter8:50

But did you always feel

Presenter8:53

A misfit in in the midst of all of this? Or were you, as you've described, in a sense, trying to fit?

Bernard Cornwell8:58

I was trying to fit and didn't. It was just one of those tragic adoptions where you simply don't fit. And I I certainly fretted under the the prohibitions and there were an awful lot of prohibitions. I mean for for a long, long time, for most of my childhood there was no television. And I was beaten once for reading the wrong kind of book. Um you know there were no cosmetics, no alcohol, no tobacco, no cinema. It just went on. Anything that might expose you to a sinful world was kept away from you in the hope of course that you'd grow up straight and true.

Presenter9:17

No alcohol.

Presenter9:28

And you did.

Bernard Cornwell9:28

And I did, so.

Presenter9:30

Tell me about record number two.

Bernard Cornwell9:32

Well, record number two is is a lovely song by Alison Krause, and it's from the the film O Brother, Where Art Thou. This is my nod towards fundamentalist Christianity. I couldn't bear to be on my desert island listening to sort of Jesus Wants Be for a Sunbeam, but I love this song, which is Down in the River to Pray.

Speaker 49:49

As I went down in the river to pray, Studying about that good old way, And who shall wear a starry crown, Good Lord, show me the way.

Speaker 410:04

Oh sisters, let's go down, let's go down, come on down.

Speaker 410:12

Oh sisters, let's go down, down in the river too.

Bernard Cornwell10:16

Uh

Presenter10:19

Alison Krause and Down to the River to Pray from the film O Brother, Where Art Thou. A saving grace for you, Bernard, it seems, was that you were sent away from school. Joe and Marjory Wiggins obviously had some money and could do that.

Bernard Cornwell10:33

Yes. I mean, Joe was a builder. I mean, his ambition was to concrete over South East Essex, in which he was largely successful. And he disliked the local state schools because they weren't religious enough. And so he sought out boarding schools for me which would be evangelical and would sort of keep me on the the straight and narrow.

Presenter10:52

But did being away at school mean you could lead a kind of more normal

Bernard Cornwell10:55

Exactly. It was a more normal life. And the Peculiars had a distrust of education. They valued education.

Bernard Cornwell11:03

But they hated the sophistication that went with it. But it but it was even awkward at school, because one of the things of growing up with the peculiar people is you'd never seen a film, you'd never seen a comic, you'd never played cards, you you simply did not share the same sort of cultural references that other people and you felt an outsider, I mean you were a rather strange beast. I remember when I was at my prep school about the age of eight, I must have written home and said that they'd served us black pudding for breakfast. Well, the next thing that happened is my father wrote to the headmaster and said that Leviticus forbade the eating of blood. So in future Bernard was not to be given blood pudding. To this day, of course, I'm extraordinarily fond of blood pudding and eat it at every possible occasion. But the headmaster left this letter lying around. So the next thing is the whole school knows that for religious reasons I'm not to get blood pudding.

Presenter11:20

You are

Presenter11:30

What happened is my

Bernard Cornwell11:51

Yeah. Uh

Presenter11:51

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell11:52

You know, which it doesn't actually make for a particularly happy, but that was fine. We saw that.

Presenter11:55

But at some point during all of this there was a huge showdown with your mother, wasn't there?

Bernard Cornwell11:59

There was a that was quite late, yes, when I was about to leave secondary school. I was growing my hair in rebellion and I think hipster jeans had just come in and she hit the roof and and tried to hit me. By this time I'm too big to be hit and I'm holding her hand so she can't hit me and she's screaming for Joe to come and carry on the assault and I thought to hell with this and walked out.

Presenter12:21

Did you ever were you ever reconciled in your mother?

Bernard Cornwell12:25

I don't think she really liked me. I mean, I remember my mother when I was seven saying, I wish we hadn't adopted you, which was a sort of a big clue And I don't blame her. You know, I mean, this is one again, something from adoption. There are people we just don't like in life and there are other people we do like and

Presenter12:39

Did you like her?

Bernard Cornwell12:40

Yeah.

Presenter12:41

Hmm.

Bernard Cornwell12:42

No. Um

Bernard Cornwell12:45

And again, which is sad. I look back at it and I see the whole adoption as a very sad thing.

Bernard Cornwell12:50

Auden said something very lovely. He said that childhood is a trap and growing up is learning the nature of the trap. Well, my trap was fundamentalist religion, um which simply did not

Bernard Cornwell13:01

Sit with me. I mean, I equipped myself to fight fundamentalist religion and then discovered there was no enemy.

Presenter13:07

You equipped yourself by studying theology.

Bernard Cornwell13:07

You equipped yourself

Bernard Cornwell13:09

By studying theology, yes.

Presenter13:10

Is that why you did it?

Bernard Cornwell13:11

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter13:12

And was there a single moment when you felt that liberation?

Bernard Cornwell13:14

Yes, I actually at last I got converted. It was a m a marvellous moment. Everything they said about it was true. The liberating influence of conversion was true. But there was one big difference. I woke up one morning and I suddenly had the absolute conviction that it was all rubbish.

Bernard Cornwell13:29

There was no God, there was no salvation, there was I mean, the whole of this Christian fundamentalist message was untrue, and I've been happy ever since. And it really was exactly what they said it was, but it was a mirror image.

Bernard Cornwell13:43

Record number three. Record number three is Van Morrison. It's a track from Astral Weeks, Madam George, and we're jumping ahead just a little, but.

Bernard Cornwell13:52

After a time I'm going to find myself in Belfast, and I remember the first summer living in Belfast. It seemed to me that every street you walked down you heard astral weeks, and so it's a happy memory of that lovely city.

Speaker 414:07

Down the Side Miss Avenue

Speaker 414:12

With a childlike vision sweeping into view

Bernard Cornwell14:15

Yeah.

Speaker 414:20

Clicking clacking of a high heel shoe

Speaker 414:27

Fraud and Fitzroy Madam George

Presenter14:32

Van Morrison and Madam George. So you studied theology, Bernard, you taught for a while and then in the early seventies you got into television apparently by accident.

Bernard Cornwell14:40

It was purely by accident and I mean it should never have been allowed. I went to a pub where a man called Frank Dale, who you will remember, also drank, and he told me one day that there was a vacancy on Nationwide. And so I phoned up and I got a an appointment with the editor. And he was explaining to me that there was no job when the phone went and it turned out that Warren Mitchell was with a um film crew in Oxford and the director hadn't turned up and and Michael the editor plainly hadn't taken a blind bit of notice of who I was and he said, Can you direct?

Bernard Cornwell15:09

And I said yes, I'd never even seen a camera. And so I found myself on a train to Oxford with a three-day contract in my pocket.

Presenter15:16

Hmm.

Bernard Cornwell15:17

And that three-day contract lasted ten years.

Presenter15:19

But you you did turn out to be very good at it. I mean, as as you say, we were together on nationwide, and you were known to be very creative. It's interesting that you took to it very naturally, didn't you?

Bernard Cornwell15:29

Well, it was fun, yes, and and and I'm sure it had an awful lot to do with the fact that, you know, the peculiars didn't approve of television. And here I was, you know, I was in the enemy fortress doing it, and it was great.

Presenter15:36

No, I was in the enemy fort.

Presenter15:38

But we all knew you in television then as Bernard Wiggins, son of Marjorie and Joe, and we heard about the peculiar people and and knew your background. Um but then suddenly when you became an author you became Bernard Cornwell. So where did that come from?

Bernard Cornwell15:50

That was the the name on my first birth on my real birth certificate. My mother's name was Cornwell, and then when I was adopted it was changed to Wiggins, and I've now legally changed it back again to Cornwell.

Presenter16:01

More elegant name, I suppose, one

Bernard Cornwell16:03

Well, it's not only is it I think I mean Wiggins is not a particularly euphonic name, Cornwall is is much nicer, but also somebody advised me when I began to write that books are put on the bookshop shelves alphabetically, and if your name begins with W, you're very likely to be bottom right-hand corner where the spiders are. Hasn't hurt Thomas Wolfe, but um C is more likely to be at I level. I passed this advice on.

Presenter16:25

Record number four.

Bernard Cornwell16:26

Well record number four is is is really a record about exile and and it's about Judy, my American wife, and it's the song that that sort of haunted us in our courtship, and um it's Judy Collins, My Father.

Speaker 416:40

My father always promised us that we would live in France.

Speaker 416:52

We'd go boarding on the sand

Speaker 416:57

And I would learn to dance.

Presenter17:04

We live in all

Presenter17:07

Judy Collins and My Father. So, Bernard, you sat down at your typewriter in nineteen seventy nine and set about writing your first book about Richard Sharp, who served Wellington as a rifleman. You said earlier on you didn't know how to write a book, you'd never written a book. You begin at the beginning. Do you make a plan? What do you do?

Bernard Cornwell17:24

I took two or three books of which I was very fond, I mean there was a couple of hornblows, and I literally broke them down and I made these huge coloured charts which tragically I've lost and and it was literally paragraph by paragraph what's going on in this book? I mean when where is their flashback, where is their action, where is their romance, where's their dialogue and so on. And I thought well the things I don't like in these books are these in blue and I'll take those out or shrink them and the things I do like are red. I

Bernard Cornwell17:48

So I basically made a plan, if you like, or I disassembled a couple of books. And I always wonder why people who want to write books don't do this, because it's you know, you go and find a book that you really like, that is selling well.

Bernard Cornwell18:00

Find out how the author did it is uh so that's what I did.

Presenter18:02

So that's

Presenter18:03

And how quickly were they taken up? Or was that first one taken up? Sharp's eagle.

Bernard Cornwell18:07

Sharp's Eagle was taken up very quickly, and I was very, very fortunate. I got one rejection from someone who said that that no one wants to read about the British Army, and I s still see that guy from time to time.

Presenter18:07

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell18:18

And then I'm I I was very fortunate because I had an offer from a publisher in Britain, which I knew was not enough. And by this time, you know, true love working, it's it's it's fell purpose. I was living in New Jersey and I needed money to go on living in New Jersey. I mean, if I couldn't get it, I'd have to go back to Britain and get a proper job.

Bernard Cornwell18:35

We were invited into a a party on Thanksgiving Day in New York, and I was standing on the balcony of this this this apartment, and the McDonald's All America High School Band was high stepping underneath, playing selections from Oklahoma.

Bernard Cornwell18:47

And a very English voice said behind me, They do this sort of thing frightfully well, don't they? So I I turned round, and being a brilliant conversationist said, Oh, you're English? Yes, he said. I said, What do you do? He said, I'm a literary agent.

Bernard Cornwell19:00

And I said,'Oh, good I've just written a novel' whereupon he he said one word unrepeatable, turned round, and walked away.

Speaker 419:02

Uh

Speaker 419:07

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell19:07

So I followed him into into the room.

Bernard Cornwell19:10

Went on my knees and said, Please, please read the novel. And he phoned me up that evening and said, How much money do you want? And within a week,

Presenter19:16

Ali

Bernard Cornwell19:18

He'd not only got me that money, he got me a seven book contract.

Presenter19:21

Seven book

Bernard Cornwell19:22

Yes, I I walk straight into a seven-book conversation.

Presenter19:24

So the dream came true in that sense, you got

Bernard Cornwell19:27

Yes, I mean it did.

Presenter19:28

Um you have quite a lot in in common, of course, with Schott. For a start you're both orphans. You gave him a sort of blank slate of a background, didn't you?

Bernard Cornwell19:36

Yes, I like that, Blank Slate, because I I used to rather like that in myself. I felt I was not in any way constrained by family expectations. So yes, Sharpe is an orphan. I I'm not sure how much else there is in common.

Presenter19:46

Well, he's got that bitterness. And I was noticing actually when I was reading, I can't remember which one it was. He murders the the rather Dickensian character who in the orphanage where he was brought up, doesn't he?

Bernard Cornwell20:00

Yes, he does, yes. But that man does not stand in for anybody in my childhood.

Presenter20:04

No, but there's a sort of resonance there. Yeah, there is a resonance, yes, of course there is. Avenging something or other.

Bernard Cornwell20:06

Yes, there is a reference, yes, of course there is, yeah.

Bernard Cornwell20:13

What childhood was for me and probably is for Richard Sharp is a distorting influence.

Speaker 420:18

Hmm.

Bernard Cornwell20:19

Um

Bernard Cornwell20:21

It it was in the end, in some ways the Peculiar People was a wonderful childhood for his historical novelist who sort of grew up in the seventeenth century.

Presenter20:30

Record number five.

Bernard Cornwell20:31

Well, this is one of my all-time favourites, of course, Over the Hills and Far Away, which was the in fact the song with the rifles in the Napoleonic Wars, and it was much older than that, of course, it came from the The Beggars' Opera by John Gay. But this is the the version sung by John Tams, who played Hagman in the television series and which of course closed every single programme of sharp.

Presenter20:40

That's

Speaker 421:03

If I should fall to rise no more

Speaker 421:08

As many comrades did before, they'd ask the five syndromes to play.

Speaker 421:16

For the hills and farms.

Presenter21:21

Over the Hills and Far Away, arranged and sung by John Tams, the theme tune to the television adaptations of Richard Sharpe's Adventures. What people love about the books, as I said in the introduction, Bernard, is their the authenticity of the detail, you know, the how the the smell of rotten eggs when when the muskets are fired and the s deadly baker rifles is on this forming a square so that the To keep the dragoons at bay. Was that all in your head because you'd it had been your hobby as a boy, or did you have to do lots more research?

Bernard Cornwell21:49

Oh, I had to do lots more research, but an enormous amount was in my head, and there are some wonderful d diaries and memoirs by the soldiers in that war.

Presenter21:56

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell21:56

Yeah.

Presenter21:56

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell21:56

Which all had to be read. But of course, this was not a job. This was a pleasure to do. It still is to this day.

Presenter21:56

Mm.

Presenter22:02

Yeah.

Presenter22:03

And you don't spare us the the detail of the squalor and the violence. Actually, I do. Do you? Yes.

Bernard Cornwell22:08

Actually, I do. Do you think that's a good question?

Bernard Cornwell22:11

It gets much, much worse. And I and I think there comes a point where people probably don't want it to be much, much worse.

Presenter22:16

I'm just thinking about the opening chapter of another of your books, a non-sharp one, a gallows thief.

Bernard Cornwell22:17

I'm just thinking

Presenter22:22

Which is a g a description of of a a young girl being dragged to the gallows for a public hanging. I mean it's just it's horri it's pretty horrendous.

Bernard Cornwell22:29

Yeah, in 18 and I that chapter is probably the one that I've researched most closely of of all the books. It's an execution at Newgate in 1817. And it was barbaric. It was absolutely barbaric. But it all happened exactly like that.

Presenter22:45

But it's the bribing of the hangman, isn't it, to make it quick, and if you don't give him something, he makes it slow.

Bernard Cornwell22:47

Mm-hmm.

Bernard Cornwell22:50

He can make it slow, yes, and and and usually give him a guinea and then he'd go underneath the scaffold and hang on your legs just to sort of because you did there was no long drop. This is a very gory subject, isn't it? There was no long drop which killed you instantly, it was a short drop.

Bernard Cornwell23:03

I guess I don't really write t terribly sort of gentle books, do I? No, you do. There are some dreadful things that go on. Believe me, I do actually do do pool my punches quite considerably.

Speaker 423:07

Uh

Presenter23:07

No, you didn't.

Presenter23:12

But it's all all grist to the Cornwell Mill. Sharp has fought through twenty battles now. He's a sort of um career soldier. Does he get to hang up his rifle at some point, or does he get to die?

Bernard Cornwell23:22

Um he's gonna die of old age.

Presenter23:24

How old is he now, then?

Bernard Cornwell23:26

Gosh, well at the end of the wars he's he he was

Bernard Cornwell23:30

I wish you hadn't asked me that question. He must be in his late thirties at work at the end of the day.

Presenter23:33

Do you keep a card index on all this, like they do of the archers? I mean, do you know exactly who said what to whom and what the relationships are?

Bernard Cornwell23:40

I wish I had. I mean, I if I'd if I'd known that there were going to be this many books and that it was going to sort of

Bernard Cornwell23:45

Just be so complicated. I would have done, but I never did.

Presenter23:48

But he dies of old age not on the battlefield.

Bernard Cornwell23:50

I am very grateful to Sharp.

Presenter23:51

Oh, uh oh I'm sure you are.

Presenter23:54

Record number six.

Bernard Cornwell23:55

Well, record number six is is is the the flower duet from Delib Lachme, and simply because this is the British Airways' signature tune. And and Judy and I both love to travel and come to England an enormous amount. And if I'm on my desert island every time I hear this I will think of those theatre visits to London and all the good times that we've been travelling.

Speaker 424:50

Uh

Speaker 425:04

I did whose eyelids.

Presenter25:09

Part of the Flower Duet from Delibes Lacmei, with Mary Plazas as Lacme and Diana Montague as Malika, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by David Parry.

Presenter25:18

Then two years ago, Bernard Cornwall, aged fifty eight, and then a secure, successful novelist in a happy marriage, you decided at last to track down your real father. Can you explain the motivation? Was it simple curiosity? Because you'd been enjoying this blank slate of yours, as you say, or was it something deeper than that?

Bernard Cornwell25:38

I don't think it was deep, but I think it is simple curiosity. And you found him in the

Presenter25:41

And you found him in the end in Canada. How did you know to look there?

Bernard Cornwell25:42

How did you know to look there? Um because when I was ten or eleven my father had left his safe open one one evening and I was walking past his study and I saw it was open and I dived in. I'm sure I was after five pound notes and didn't find them. What I did find was a piece of paper with my real parents' names written on it.

Bernard Cornwell26:00

And I copied it out and I kept that piece of paper for years.

Presenter26:02

So you knew you were a product of a a local London girl and a Canadian.

Bernard Cornwell26:04

Yeah.

Bernard Cornwell26:06

And a Canadian called William Outridge, yeah. And then two years ago and I thought, Well, if they're still alive, they're over eighty. I don't need parents any longer. You know, I I I'm past all that. I'm quite happy, I'm secure, I don't need them, now is the time to actually find them. So I wrote to him.

Bernard Cornwell26:22

And Sarah, if you don't want to meet me, that's fine.

Presenter26:24

And were you a skeleton in his cupboard?

Bernard Cornwell26:26

Yes, very, very much so. William had never told anybody about me. He knew about me. He knew that Dorothy was pregnant, and he went back to Canada. He married very, very happily, had a very, very successful marriage, had three children. His wife sadly died ten years ago.

Presenter26:43

So it was just a brief affair with your marriage. It was a seven-month affair. Even though he knew she was pregnant, he moved on.

Bernard Cornwell26:45

It was a seven-month affair.

Bernard Cornwell26:49

I'm afraid so. Yes.

Presenter26:50

So it was quite big of him to agree to meet you in the second.

Bernard Cornwell26:54

I think it was. And and it was very weird at fifty eight to suddenly find people who laugh the same way that you did and sort of scratch the same way.

Presenter27:01

Really, same mannerisms.

Bernard Cornwell27:02

Yes, and I look very like him. I look more like him than his other kids. And yes, and I'm imagining

Presenter27:07

Wait a moment. I mean, what what

Bernard Cornwell27:09

It was. It was more than I expected. It was much more. I mean, I told myself I was doing this out of curiosity only. And then, of course, it became much, much more because.

Bernard Cornwell27:17

It became much more emotional. I can remember.

Bernard Cornwell27:21

standing outside his his apartment, looking in on this very happy family, which I had suddenly been welcomed into and welcomed with open arms.

Bernard Cornwell27:30

And and thinking of my adopted mother and thinking, Gotcha.

Presenter27:34

Oh really, why?

Bernard Cornwell27:35

I don't know, it's terrible, isn't it? But just thinking that and thinking, you know, this this was what I was born to, not you.

Bernard Cornwell27:41

and thinking how different it would have been had I been brought up in that family.

Presenter27:45

And then last year, a year after you'd found your father, you found your mother.

Bernard Cornwell27:48

I found my Dorothy, yes.

Presenter27:49

Dorothy in in the London suburbs. Interestingly, she had known you, Bernard Cornwell, the successful novelist, was her son, hadn't she?

Bernard Cornwell27:59

Yes, Dorothy loves historical novels. I mean the odd thing was walking into D Dorothy's flat and and seeing everywhere, I mean triple stacked were historical novels. And a very different kettle of fish to to my father. I mean Dor Dorothy's had a very tough life. Um she's a very tough lady. And she'd had four other sons other than me. She hadn't told any of her kids about me, or indeed any of her brothers or sisters.

Bernard Cornwell28:22

But about all

Bernard Cornwell28:24

Sixteen, seventeen years ago she saw the name Bernard Cornwall on the spine of a book, and I remember that she had registered my birth as Bernard Cornwall. She opens the book, and on the back flap there is a photograph of me, looking exactly like

Bernard Cornwell28:40

the man with whom she'd had an affair.

Presenter28:42

But why when she saw your name on that book, as you say, sixteen or seventeen years ago, why why didn't she get in touch?

Bernard Cornwell28:49

I don't know. I and I wish she had. I really wish she had. She told me that she she didn't want me to think that she was after me money.

Presenter28:55

Hmm.

Bernard Cornwell28:55

So she didn't she didn't get in touch with me and as I say it was only last year we met.

Presenter28:59

And when you did.

Presenter29:01

Well, that must have been quite a moment.

Bernard Cornwell29:03

That was also quite a moment, yes and where I look like my father, I think I get a lot of my character from Dorothy.

Presenter29:10

But let me ask you a very biased female mother's question. Was there something more emotional about meeting your mother? Perhaps particularly in your case, because she was the the woman who'd who'd borne you, given birth to you, who'd nursed you for a couple of weeks before she had to give you away? I mean, your father.

Presenter29:26

I just gone, hadn't he?

Bernard Cornwell29:28

Is he just gone?

Bernard Cornwell29:30

There again, I mean

Bernard Cornwell29:32

I can remember thinking, it would have been so nice if you'd kept me and she wanted to keep me and and her mother wanted her to keep me. It was her father who who really insisted that she put me away.

Bernard Cornwell29:44

Yeah. I mean, I think I'd again, I would have been much happier if I'd have been brought up by Dorothy.

Presenter29:49

I quote number seven.

Bernard Cornwell29:50

Well record number seven is is part of the Benedictus from Mozart's Requiem and I can remember years ago, in I was very young, hearing Mozart's Requiem and being swept away, and I still am swept away.

Speaker 430:24

Holy nerves.

Presenter30:57

Part of the Benedictus from Mozart's Requiem, sung by Wilmer Lipp, Hilda Rossel, Maidan, Anton de Motte, Walter Berry, and the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karrion at least they weren't singing, but they were playing it.

Presenter31:10

This is the moment, Bernard, when we uh push you over the side and you swim for that desert island. Are you going to manage there by yourself, do you think?

Bernard Cornwell31:16

Actually I think I will.

Presenter31:18

Really?

Bernard Cornwell31:18

Yes. I mean, well, remember, first I'm a writer, so I quite like my own company. I mean, I know I'll build a shelter. I'll rather enjoy that.

Presenter31:24

Sharpwood, of course. Sharp would fashion the sword. You would sort of slice a skunk and fry it on the half coconut shell or something, wouldn't you?

Bernard Cornwell31:32

I'm I'm sure he would. Yes, he'd he'd be very impressive. So I'd do my best to emulate him. So I think, yes, I'd rather like a desert island.

Presenter31:36

Yeah.

Presenter31:38

And no bitterness, no regrets, as you said there. Finding your your parents and

Bernard Cornwell31:42

Thank you.

Presenter31:44

Oh

Bernard Cornwell31:44

Yeah, I mean it that that all went a long, long long time ago.

Presenter31:48

Hm. You're very lucky, aren't you? You've been very lucky.

Bernard Cornwell31:51

I've been very, very lucky. I mean, I've been extraordinarily lucky. I mean, meeting Judy and then doing what I've always wanted to do, which is to write. And I've been doing it now for twenty five years. I still do it.

Bernard Cornwell32:01

and I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

Presenter32:04

Last rate.

Bernard Cornwell32:05

Well the last record is is really a tribute to the States. And one of the most wonderful romantic things I think about America is driving down the long interstates, seeing those wonderful romantic names, you know, Amarilla or Memphis. And there's only one thing you can have on the radio as you drive the interstates and that's Country and Western. So this is one of my absolute favourites. It's Willie Nelson and it's Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys, which is very good advice.

Speaker 432:31

My heroes have always been cowboys.

Speaker 432:38

They still are seen.

Speaker 432:43

Sadly in search of

Speaker 432:47

One step and back of themselves

Speaker 432:51

And there's no approving.

Presenter32:58

Willie Nelson and Mamma don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. If you could only take one of those eight records, Bernard, which one would you take?

Bernard Cornwell33:04

Oh, it's going to be Mozart's Requiem.

Presenter33:06

Hmm.

Bernard Cornwell33:06

No hesitation at all.

Presenter33:08

And then you get to take a book. We give you the complete works of Shakespeare. We give you the Bible, but I dare say you don't want it.

Bernard Cornwell33:14

There were firelighters.

Presenter33:16

Si cómo siopo.

Bernard Cornwell33:18

My book is is A Glastonbury Romance by John Cooper Powers, and it's full of an exquisite sensibility and and I've never really given it the time it deserves, so I want to take that.

Presenter33:27

And what about your luxury?

Bernard Cornwell33:29

Well, my luxury I want to take my boat. Are you going to let me?

Presenter33:34

Depends what you're gonna do. And if you go round in circles, round and round the alignment.

Bernard Cornwell33:37

I can go around if I promise not to sort of go outside the lagoon. And and but I love my boat is wonderful and and I want to take my boat so that I can sail.

Presenter33:40

Yeah.

Presenter33:45

Are you as trustworthy as Richard Sharp, in which case you can't have it?

Bernard Cornwell33:51

And a promise to be trustworthy.

Presenter33:51

I think

Presenter33:52

Bernard Cornwell, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Bernard Cornwell33:55

Thank you.

Speaker 334:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.