Agincourt CD [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Bernard Cornwell (Author), Charles Keating (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2009

"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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description

"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.

Historical Notes on Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell

The battle of Agincourt (Azincourt was and remains the French spelling) was one of the most remarkable events of medieval Europe, a battle whose reputation far outranked its importance. In the long history of Anglo-French rivalry only Hastings, Waterloo, Trafalgar, and Crécy share Agincourt’s renown. It is arguable that Poitiers was a more significant battle and an even more complete victory, or that Verneuil was just as astonishing a triumph, and it’s certain that Hastings, Blenheim, Victoria, Trafalgar, and Waterloo were more influential on the course of history, yet Agincourt still holds its extraordinary place in English legend. Something quite remarkable happened on 25 October 1415 (Agincourt was fought long before Christendom’s conversion to the new-style calendar, so the modern anniversary should be on 4 November). It was something so remarkable that its fame persists almost six hundred years later.

Agincourt’s fame could just be an accident, a quirk of history reinforced by Shakespeare’s genius, but the evidence suggests it really was a battle that sent a shock wave through Europe. For years afterward the French called 25 October 1415 la malheureuse journée (the unfortunate day). Even after they had expelled the English from France they remembered la malheureuse journée with sadness. It had been a disaster.

Yet it was so nearly a disaster for Henry V and his small, but well-equipped army. That army had sailed from Southampton Water with high hopes, the chief of which was the swift capture of Harfleur, which would be followed by a foray into the French heartland in hope, presumably, of bringing the French to battle. A victory in that battle would demonstrate, at least in the pious Henry’s mind, God’s support of his claim to the French throne, and might even propel him onto that throne. Such hopes were not vain when his army was intact, but the siege of Harfleur took much longer than expected and Henry’s army was almost ruined by dysentery.

The tale of the siege in the novel is, by and large, accurate, though I did take one great liberty, which was to sink a mineshaft opposite the Leure Gate. There was no such shaft, the ground would not allow it, and all the real mines were dug by the Duke of Clarence’s forces that were assailing the eastern side of Harfleur. The French counter-mines defeated those diggings, but I wanted to give a flavor, however inadequately, of the horrors men faced in fighting beneath the earth. The defense of Harfleur was magnificent, for which much of the praise must go to Raoul de Gaucourt, one of the garrison’s leaders. His defiance, and the long days of the siege, gave the French a chance to raise a much larger army than any they might have fielded against Henry if the siege had ended, say, in early September.

Maps of the Battlefield (Click to Enlarge)

England and France, 1415: 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.

The French Coast: The British campaign, which started at Harfleur, ended more than two months later on 25 October at Agincourt.	Harfleur: Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415 and besieged the port of Harfleur.	The Battle Lines: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” – William Shakespeare, Henry V

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

A literary veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and the U.S. Civil War, Cornwell returns to the Hundred Years War era in this action-packed if slightly melodramatic epic about King Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Nicholas Hook, an English forester, is on the run after interfering with a rapist priest and ends up a mercenary defender at Soissons, where he saves a young and beautiful novitiate, Melisande. With his French prize in tow, he returns to England and signs on with Henry's army as an archer. Back on French soil, he fights and slogs his way to Agincourt, where 6,000 Englishmen confront 30,000 French soldiers. Hearing the voice of St. Crispinian whispering to him in times of personal crisis, Hook has his hands full with the French and defending himself from the vengeance-seeking rapist priest and Melisande's father. The crisply rendered battle scenes are adrenaline rushes of blood, thunder and clashing swords that transport the reader back to the early 15th century. Unfortunately, Hook's Hollywood-ready construction undercuts the you are there feeling of Cornwell's otherwise vivid recreation of Henry V's greatest military triumph. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: HarperAudio; Unabridged edition (January 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060780967
• ISBN-13: 978-0060780968
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 5.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (143 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #425,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bernard Cornwell was born in London in 1944 - a 'warbaby' - whose father was a Canadian airman and mother in Britain's Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted by a family in Essex who belonged to a religious sect called the Peculiar People (and they were), but escaped to London University and, after a stint as a teacher, he joined BBC Television where he worked for the next 10 years. He began as a researcher on the Nationwide programme and ended as Head of Current Affairs Television for the BBC in Northern Ireland. It was while working in Belfast that he met Judy, a visiting American, and fell in love. Judy was unable to move to Britain for family reasons so Bernard went to the States where he was refused a Green Card. He decided to earn a living by writing, a job that did not need a permit from the US government - and for some years he had been wanting to write the adventures of a British soldier in the Napoleonic wars - and so the Sharpe series was born. Bernard and Judy married in 1980, are still married, still live in the States and he is still writing Sharpe.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

139 of 141 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars one of cornwell's better novels, November 29, 2008

By 

David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Agincourt: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is currently (Nov 29) available from amazon.uk under the title "Azincourt", which is the French spelling of the town where the battle took place. It seems that this has confused quite a few of the Brit readers, and the US title will be "Agincourt". The flavor is similar to the Grail Quest series, but set in 1413-1415 rather than the 14th century, and the hero is Nick Hook rather than Thomas of Hookton: both are skilled archers, both have noble fathers but are not part of the nobility (in Hook's case the parentage is strongly suggested). The strengths of Cornwell's works are the battle scenes, and here you get the sieges of Harfleur and Soissons and of course Agincourt.

You get a good feel for the time and place--London and France--and the mercenary troops that Hook joins. There's a lot of attention to the armor of the period--almost too much attention. There are descriptions that have the donning of armor piece by piece which has the feel of Cornwell showing off his research rather than adding to the story--since it isn't Hook who is wearing the armor. Hook is an exceptionally skilled longbowman, which enables him to rise in the ranks and do more protagonizing, so to speak. We don't get too many novels about the ordinary grunts--those who might be good at their profession, but not great.

Cornwell is a very prolific writer. This is good in ways, but the danger is that sometimes in such cases novels are not always as original and creative as they could be. So in Azincourt we have a love interest, and we have some evil villains. Hook's main enemy is a lunatic priest of noble lineage, a bible-misquoting rapist. For me, this reminded me of Sgt Hakeswill of the Sharpe series who kept reappearing in the novels until, mercifully, Cornwell has him die: Hakeswill quickly began to get very tiresome indeed. If you think about the Sharpe series, what you remember best are the battles, the events and locales: the evil villians--especially Hakeswill--are easily forgotten. That might suggest that in a good historical novel with lots of battles, such as the Sharpe series or Azincourt, you don't need an evil villain in the story to make it interesting. You need to avoid becoming formulaic. Cornwell does not, thank goodness, churn out a new novel every month like some romance writers who epitomize formulaic writing. I didn't see any suggestion that the adventures of Nick Hook will be continued, although if it does continue, and Hook is part of a mercenary troop then Cornwell might be able to take us into less familiar territory--what was going on post-Agincourt? So you get here a mixture of some new characters plus some of Cornwell's previous formulas, and on balance, the novel is one of his best works.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars We Few, We Proud, We Band of Readers, January 31, 2009

By 

Kregg Jorgenson "Writetrak" (Seattle) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Agincourt: A Novel (Hardcover)

When I hear reviewers say that 'No one understands the experience of the common soldier better than Bernard Cornwell' or something similar, I smile and think, 'Yeah, well how about the common soldier? And by that, I mean the Infantry 'grunt' who wields a modern sword, still sleeps in mud and filth, and endures ordeals and trials the likes of which most people will only ever read about. It's just possible he might have a clue.
Having said that, let me add that no WRITER understands the experience of the common soldier better than Bernard Cornwell. He's the Ernie Pyle of, oh, let's see- the Viking raids, Napoleonic wars, the Middle Ages, and the American War Between the States (or for my Southern friends- 'The War of Northern Aggression). In short, Cornwell gets it right; the pride, the rage, the pain, the loss and the soul sucking weariness in the aftermath of battle.
AGINCOURT is his latest novel and his latest educational look at a battle that inspired so many writers and historians. Here we find young Nicholas Hook, an archer who...nevermind.
Don't you just hate it when some smug reviewer gives away too much of the plot before you've had a chance to read the book? 'Who would've known that such is such is really the bad guy, he or she dies, or here's how the major battle ends?
I don't know, the reader, for one. You're really capable of making up our own mind about what you like and/or the why behind why you like it.
So, I'll just say that if you're a Cornwell fan, you'll enjoy the book. He seldom skimps on storyline.
And if you're familiar with his themes then you already know that there has to be a troubled young soldier, more than a few fierce battles and close calls, revenge, of course, and a young woman who makes his arrow's quiver (sorry but I did avoid punning with the word 'shaft').
Typical too of Cornwell's writing is that there is also good history to be found in whatever era he sets his story. He does his homework so that we don't have to.
Finally, and this probably won't count for much but as a former common soldier, a lowly 'grunt' who took part in a distant war, in several close fierce battles, and bled on nameless battle fields a few times, I find Bernard Cornwell's work to be exceptional.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cornwell tells their story, and nobody does it better., January 26, 2009

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Agincourt: A Novel (Hardcover)

Here's the situation. You're a peasant, and as we used to say back home, you're so broke you can't pay attention. You're in the middle of a medieval battlefield, filled with rough characters and sharp weapons, with nothing to cover your own precious hide but the clothes on your back. You have one superb weapon --- the English longbow --- but not much in the way of arrows. You also have a long, sharp stick, assuming you haven't burned it for firewood already. On the other side of the line of battle, there is a nobleman, a feudal lord who owns, more or less, the labor of hundreds of people just like you. He's on a horse, wearing a suit of armor that incorporates all of the best technology of the day and worth more than your entire village can produce in 10 years. You've shot your last arrow, and the guy with the armor is coming to crush your skull. A plan would seem to be in order.

This is what you do, if you're lucky enough and strong enough to pull it off. You plant yourself right in front of the galloping, charging horse (nobody said this was going to be easy), stab it with your sharpened stick, and hope that the animal is hurt enough and scared enough to knock its rider clean off. While the knight is still on his back, trapped under the weight of his armor, you find the one weak spot in the armor --- his visor. And then you draw your long hunting knife and stab the no-good wretch right in the eye. Score one for the home team.

That's the reality of medieval warfare. It's savage, messy, and a million miles away from something as comparatively cold and dispassionate as pushing the button that unleashes hundreds of pounds of high explosives from a Predator drone over a terrorist camp. And if you want to bring back that world in fiction, it's not enough to reproduce the strategies of battle and the blood and slaughter that follows in its wake. You have to know the ground --- the sticky French mud that bogged down a huge army, making it vulnerable to barefoot English archers. You have to know the technology --- how the English craftsmen took a piece of yew wood and shaped it into a weapon that changed history. You have to know the dynastic politics that animate the strategy, the engineering of the castles and the religious beliefs that led men into battle.

In other words, it's the kind of thing that Bernard Cornwell has been doing for years --- and nobody does it better.

If you're not familiar with Cornwell's work, you can start with his bestselling novels about the Viking era in England, which follow a ferocious war leader into the shield walls of Alfred the Great. Or you can check out the monumental Richard Sharpe series, which chronicles a Napoleonic War hero from the torture pits of an Indian warlord all the way to a personal confrontation with the Corsican corporal in exile on the lonely island of St. Helena. Both of these series (as well as other Cornwell novels set in the Civil War or the American Revolution) betray a comprehensive knowledge of their respective historical eras --- and, even more important, considerable skill in making the battlefields and characters come to full, comprehensible life.

Cornwell's books are populated with stout, resolute heroes, noble enemies and the treacherous plots of evil men. AGINCOURT is no exception; the differences are largely in the areas of weapons technology, strategy and the intricate details of late medieval life. Its principal hero, longbowman Nicholas Hook, differs from most Cornwell protagonists in his religious faith (notwithstanding that it's hard to be a good Christian when your job description involves stabbing people in the eye).

The story of the climactic battle of Agincourt has been told before, most notably by Shakespeare, who gives King Henry perhaps the most rousing speech in English literature. Cornwell incorporates that speech in his narrative, but it's more of a grace note than anything else. The real work is done in the trenches, by the men with the long bows and the empty stomachs. Cornwell tells their story, and nobody does it better.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds