THE PAGAN LORD
BERNARD CORNWELL
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2013
Maps © John Gilkes 2013
Family tree © Colin Hall 2009
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover illustration © Lee Gibbons/Tin Moon www.leegibbons.co.uk.
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007331925
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007331949
Version: 2019-09-27
THE PAGAN LORD
is for Tom and Dana
Go raibh mile maith agat
CONTENTS
The spelling of place names in Anglo-Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest to AD 900, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; I should spell England as Englaland, and have preferred the modern form Northumbria to Norðhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list, like the spellings