George R.R. Martin may be best known as the man behind Game of Thrones, but when he isn’t busy killing off characters or plotting major twists, he’s doing what he’s always done: reading.
And in 2020, the fantasy titan revealed the one series that stood above all others for him – a tale of shield walls, bloodied swords, and one particularly stubborn warrior named Uhtred.
George RR Martin named Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series – formally known as The Saxon Stories – as his all-time favourite. The books follow Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a dispossessed Northumbrian lord raised by Vikings, who serves various kings during the turbulent birth of England. The first novel, The Last Kingdom, was published in 2004 and went on to become the basis for the hit Netflix series of the same name.
“I read. A lot,” he began on his blog post titled ‘Old Favorites, New Favorites’. “Since I was a kid… but the best times are when a story really gets its hooks into me and I find I cannot put it down. Bernard Cornwell is one of the writers who never fails to grab me by the throat.”
Martin praised the entire Uhtred saga, writing, “I have loved his Sharpe books, several of his stand-alones, his Thomas of Hookton series, his Arthurian triad… but my favorite is his long-running Saxon series.” He called the most recent volume at the time, War Lord, “excellent, as always,” and admitted: “It went right to the top of the stack, and I gulped it right down.”
For Martin, Cornwell’s ability to give renewed life to a long-forgotten corner of British history set him apart from everyone else. “No one writes better historical fiction than Cornwell… and the Saxon series is especially cool in that it brings to life a part of British history that I knew almost nothing about.”
He noted that while other historical periods have been “done to death, in good books and bad ones,” Cornwell found something fresh and overlooked: “The battle scenes are terrific, as ever. Cornwell brings battles to life like no one else, whether he is writing about the shield walls of the Dark Ages or the musketry of the Napoleonic Era.”
Althought, amidst the praise, Martin bitersweetly noted that War Lord might be the end of Uhtred’s journey: “It reads as if it is the last Uhtred. We have been following him since childhood, but he is very old now, and on his third king, and the epilogue definitely gives the impression that his tale is at an end. If so… well, he had a great run, but I will miss him.”
“Though maybe Cornwell will continue with tales of Uhtred son of Uhtred son of Uhtred, who knows?”, he humorously added.
Cornwell’s books have since been adapted for television, with The Last Kingdom series first airing on the BBC in 2015 before being picked up by Netflix. Across five seasons and a film finale (Seven Kings Must Die), the story reached millions of new fans, with Alexander Dreymon taking on the lead role.
“If you like historical fiction, read War Lord by all means,” he wrote, “but don’t start there. If you have not been following Uhtred previously, you want the start with The Last Kingdom. Despite having ‘last’ in the title, it is actually the first book in the series.”