About this item
Highlights
- "Agincourt is classic Cornwell...[with] attention to historical detail, well-paced action, and descriptive writing that is a pleasure to read.
- Author(s): Bernard Cornwell
- 656 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Historical
Description
About the Book
"Agincourt is classic Cornwell...[with] attention to historical detail, well-paced action, and descriptive writing that is a pleasure to read." --Boston Globe Bernard Cornwell, the New York Times bestselling "reigning king of historical fiction" (USA Today), tackles his most thrilling, rich, and enthralling subject yet--the heroic tale of Agincourt. The epic battle immortalized by William Shakespeare in his classic Henry V is the background for this breathtaking tale of heroism, love, devotion, and duty from the legendary author of the Richard Sharpe novels and the Saxon Tales. This extraordinary adventure will captivate from page one, proving once again and most powerfully, as author Lee Child attests, that "nobody in the world does this stuff better than Cornwell."Book Synopsis
"Agincourt is classic Cornwell...[with] attention to historical detail, well-paced action, and descriptive writing that is a pleasure to read."
--Boston Globe
Bernard Cornwell, the New York Times bestselling "reigning king of historical fiction" (USA Today), tackles his most thrilling, rich, and enthralling subject yet--the heroic tale of Agincourt. The epic battle immortalized by William Shakespeare in his classic Henry V is the background for this breathtaking tale of heroism, love, devotion, and duty from the legendary author of the Richard Sharpe novels and the Saxon Tales. This extraordinary adventure will captivate from page one, proving once again and most powerfully, as author Lee Child attests, that "nobody in the world does this stuff better than Cornwell."
From the Back Cover
"The greatest writer of historical adventures today" (Washington Post) tackles his richest, most thrilling subject yet--the heroic tale of Agincourt.
Young Nicholas Hook is dogged by a cursed past--haunted by what he has failed to do and banished for what he has done. A wanted man in England, he is driven to fight as a mercenary archer in France, where he finds two things he can love: his instincts as a fighting man, and a girl in trouble. Together they survive the notorious massacre at Soissons, an event that shocks all Christendom. With no options left, Hook heads home to England, where his capture means certain death. Instead he is discovered by the young King of England--Henry V himself--and by royal command he takes up the longbow again and dons the cross of Saint George. Hook returns to France as part of the superb army Henry leads in his quest to claim the French crown. But after the English campaign suffers devastating early losses, it becomes clear that Hook and his fellow archers are their king's last resort in a desperate fight against an enemy more daunting than they could ever have imagined.
One of the most dramatic victories in British history, the battle of Agincourt--immortalized by Shakespeare in Henry V--pitted undermanned and overwhelmed English forces against a French army determined to keep their crown out of Henry's hands. Here Bernard Cornwell resurrects the legend of the battle and the "band of brothers" who fought it on October 25, 1415. An epic of redemption, Agincourt follows a commoner, a king, and a nation's entire army on an improbable mission to test the will of God and reclaim what is rightfully theirs. From the disasters at the siege of Harfleur to the horrors of the field of Agincourt, this exhilarating story of survival and slaughter is at once a brilliant work of history and a triumph of imagination--Bernard Cornwell at his best.
Review Quotes
"A brutal and visceral tour through the medieval world, where life is balanced on the point of an arrow, and where war is fought with every bit of sinew in one's body. A brilliant and stunning epic of ordinary men facing insurmountable odds. It left me breathless." -- James Rollins, author of The Last Oracle
"A compelling novel of the events leading to, and culminating in, one of the touchstone battles of Medieval Europe. Bernard Cornwell has a positive gift for describing the brutality, the grit, the simple manual labor, and the absolute awfulness of battle. This is a really good book." -- John Sandford, author of Phantom Prey
"Readers who haven't discovered Bernard Cornwell don't know what they are missing: his books are page-turners that both educate and entertain. He may well be the best historical novelist writing today--and Agincourt may well be his best novel yet." -- Vince Flynn, author of Extreme Measures
"A masterful tale of that medieval campaign--as terrifying as the razor-sharp arrow storms that the men-at-arms archers let fly." -- W.E.B. Griffin & William E. Butterworth IV, authors of Black Ops
"With a combination of painstaking historical research--how to make the most effective fire-arrow; how best to blind a man in battle; how to teach a child to prime a crossbow--and writing of fierce and urgent vividity, Bernard Cornwell has brought this most crucial and bloody of Europe's fifteenth century battles into the sharpest focus. Agincourt had me utterly captivated: I relished every single second of it." -- Simon Winchester, author of The Man Who Loved China
"His best book yet. No one understands the experience of the common soldier better than Bernard Cornwell and in this gripping account of the Agincourt campaign, seen through the eyes of a simple archer, he tears away the gloss of legend to reveal the raw truth of medieval warfare in all its shocking brutality, filth and gore." -- Juliet Barker, author of Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England