100 Words: Tracking Inspiration … for a change

England remains a seafaring nation and loves its nautical traditions. I, too, love the great seafaring historical novels by C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, and Bernard Cornwell (50 or so novels altogether). “The Last Kingdom” author says his own ancestral roots gave him the idea for Uhtred, the half-Dane warrior who helps King Alfred unite Britain. Cornwell grew up loving Forester’s Napoleonic War novels featuring Horatio Hornblower, and later revered the Jack Aubrey-Stephen Maturin series. Forester inspired Cornwell to write his own series about the Napoleonic wars, only on land, featuring fictional rifleman Richard Sharp. Sometimes, inspiration is easy to track.