How Historical is Historical Fiction? An Interview with Bernard Cornwell.

In July 2017, I attended and spoke at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. It was a tremendous honor for me to join fellow authors Justin Hill, James Aitcheson, and Kelly Evans on stage for a round table discussion on the topic of historical fiction and the role it plays in presenting the medieval world outside of academia. Yet as I sat among my peers at the session, I could not help but think that for such a prestigious event, with a room full of academics as our audience, one person remained conspicuously absent. That person was Bernard Cornwell.

Bernard Cornwell is arguably the most well known and widely read author of medieval historical fiction. With series spanning most of the medieval period and beyond, including his series Saxon Tales and Grail Quest, I felt that his insights on the topic we discussed would have been invaluable to us and to our audience. Although he had been invited to Leeds, he was unable to make it due to a previous engagement. I personally reached out to him to see if he might be interested in participating in our discussion post-conference to the benefit of my readers and, hopefully, some of the folks we had in the audience during the session. Bernard Cornwell graciously accepted my invitation to be interviewed on the topic.

The topic of the round table was defined as follows: “Fiction offers a degree of creative freedom unavailable to the scholar, yet as both readers and critics, we desire authenticity in these texts – particularly because, for many, such texts are the first point of contact with the medieval world. Thus, historical fiction as a genre raises important questions. How ‘historical’ is it? How does the fiction writer balance creativity against the restraints of historical ‘accuracy’? What is the relationship between research and storytelling? This round table discussion will explore these issues, as well as practical aspects of writing and publication, with published fiction writers whose works can be broadly classed as ‘medieval historical fiction.’”

A sincere and heartfelt thank you to Bernard Cornwell for taking the time to answer these questions.

How Historical is Historical Fiction? What Does the Term Mean to You?

It’s really a circular answer! If the novel isn’t historical, then it isn’t historical fiction! What it means to me is that any historical novel tries to offer the reader a picture of another era, and tries to make that picture as accurate as possible. Writers create worlds, and the world of a historical novelist is the past! I’m sure we don’t get it right much of the time, but still the background to the story should evoke a long- gone era to the reader…what it looked like, smelt like, was like! So the background world has to be as accurate as possible, regardless of what is happening in the story.

What is the relationship between research and storytelling?

I can’t say there’s a huge relationship, though very often the research will suggest a story idea? You certainly can’t write a historical novel without doing vast amounts of research, but the first rule of writing the book is to leave out all the irrelevant research (about 90%).

What is historical “Accuracy?” Can Authenticity Exist in Fiction Writing?

You tell me! No one will probably ever know what it was truly like to live in a long-gone past, so we all make educated guesses and we hope we get it right! Plainly the more research a novelist does then the greater the chance that his guesses are accurate, and the more detail he amasses of the period then the greater the authenticity! And yes, authenticity certainly exists in fiction, it’s the authentic detail that creates the fictional world. Is it fully authentic? I doubt it, but we try!

How Do You Balance Accuracy, Authenticity, and Creativity?

By remembering that I’m not a historian. I’m not here to teach Anglo-Saxon history or any other history. I’m a story-teller, so my first responsibility is to tell a story! That story is fiction, even if it’s based on a well-known episode of history. So accuracy and authenticity must take second place to the story. There’s obviously a limit to that; a fiction writer can’t get away with le