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    Azincourt
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    Azincourt
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    Azincourt
    Audiobook13 hours

    Azincourt

    Written by Bernard Cornwell

    Narrated by Damien Goodwin

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    An extraordinary and dramatic depiction of the legendary battle of Agincourt from the number one historical novelist

    Agincourt, fought on October 25th 1415, St Crispin's Day, is one of England’s best-known battles, in part through the brilliant depiction of it in Shakespeare's Henry V, in part because it was a brilliant and unexpected English victory and in part because it was the first battle won by the use of the longbow - a weapon developed by the English which enabled them to dominate the European battlefields for the rest of the century.

    Bernard Cornwell’s Azincourt is a vivid, breathtaking and meticulously well-researched account of this momentous battle and its aftermath. From the varying viewpoints of nobles, peasants, archers, and horsemen, Azincourt skilfully brings to life the hours of relentless fighting, the desperation of an army crippled by disease and the exceptional bravery of the English soldiers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 28, 2009
    ISBN9780007314720
    Unavailable
    Azincourt
    Author

    Bernard Cornwell

    BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of over fifty novels, including the acclaimed New York Times bestselling Saxon Tales, which serve as the basis for the hit Netflix series The Last Kingdom. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod and in Charleston, South Carolina.

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    Reviews for Azincourt

    4/5

    81 ratings45 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I don't think it's Cornwall's best but it's still decent, worth a read if you're interested in the era.
    • 4/5
      High adventure, with no shortage of action and bloodshed; in short, not really my thing, but Cornwell does it very well. The mass of fine details suggest that he has researched his topic thoroughly. The final section, which focuses on the battle of Agincourt itself (apparently Azincourt is the more correct name of the location), is particulary gripping as you move between different parts of the battle on the one hand and a violent attack on the French wife of one of the English archers that is taking place at the same time. I digested those final hundred or so pages in one sitting having taken months to get through the proceeding three hundred pages in very small chunks between reading other things. I'm glad I persevered.
    • 4/5
      Blood and guts and war and fighting galore! I wasn't sure I'd like this, but the close attention to historical detail made it all interesting. The plot-line was a bit pedestrian...poor, but strong and brave Nick Hook works his way up from outlaw to archer. He saves the fair Melisande at the battle of Soissons were she is about to be raped by an Englishman. They escape and fall in love, only to travel back to France the following year to lay siege to Harfleur and then eventually fight the big battle of Agincourt. The fate of Melisande's father is left unresolved, which annoyed me. Melisande is also annoyingly perfect. Read this one for the history!
    • 4/5
      I love Cornwell, so it is no surprise that I also enjoyed this book. I love the vivid battle scenes, the achingly difficult scenarios the characters are put through. The details are intense and so compelling. Great read.
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully done but that's no surprise. Cornwell is a masterful story-teller and brings to life one of the most momentous battles in British history.
    • 4/5
      For the most part, I read historical fiction to learn. This means I must choose my authors carefully and only go for those who do meticulous research and incorporate very little fiction into their works. Bernard Cornwell is such an author. Having read a few of his books before, I knew that he got the facts right and often fictionalized a real person as the main character for his stories. This makes for a terrific vehicle to propel the story as well as an emotional hook.Hook is right. Nick Hook is the main character in Agincourt and the story unfolds around him. He’s an archer (who really did serve with Henry V although of course his particular story is Cornwell’s fiction). Much is made of the English archer in this story. I knew about them…in the sense that I knew they existed, but didn’t understand why so much had been made of them in history. Now I know. It took years to make a proper archer; a lifetime in fact. Not only did one have to be super-hero strong, but accurate and determined. One had to have composure and a surety of self that bordered on arrogance. When those elements came together in one man, it was a menace. When thousands of those men came together it was a slaughter.Medieval warfare was a close and bloody thing, as was all warfare up until the invention of guns, cannon and bombs. At great risk to yourself, you mostly had to get right up on a person to kill him. Bows gave us distance and safety. Crossbows are good for fairly close work, but the longbow gave the English a higher degree of safety than did the French crossbows. In the historical note at the end, the author’s research estimates that an English archer could launch 12 arrows a minute with a high degree of accuracy. 6000 of them could loose 72,000 arrows in a single minute. No wonder the sight is often described as blotting out the sun.Those with weak stomachs will do well to avoid this novel (as a matter of fact, it was reviews warning me of such graphic violence that spurred me to download it in the first place – what the average woman hates, I often enjoy). The battle scenes pull no punches and describe killing blows over and over. It gets a bit wearing, but the technique is good to engage the reader’s emotions. In this day and age it is difficult to imagine such a battle. The hand to hand fighting required great skill and detachment. Ruthlessness and singleness of purpose. I don’t think they make men like that anymore. I think it’s been bred out of us.Another thing that makes it a difficult read, especially for women, is the constant rape that follows fighting. Those are the real victims. It didn’t matter who she was, if she had a vagina, it was violated. If she was lucky, the horde would kill her when they were done. If the scenes had gone on any longer than they did (raping is largely contained to the beginning, when two particular rapes set Hook in motion and give him some purpose), I would have had to skip over them.I liked the story of Hook and Millicent. It rang with some truth and wasn’t overly mushy. Romance was needed in this story to give us a reprieve from the constant suffering and brutality. I liked her character and the fact that she got a little bit of her own back in the end.That was also satisfying; the close villains (meaning, not the French who are the overall enemy of the piece) are drawn very well. The Perrills are the generations-long sworn enemies of the Hooks. They plague Nick throughout the novel and are right bastards. The commentary on the priesthood and church is a bit heavy handed at times, but mostly focused into a single character; Sir Martin Perrill, a priest, certifiable lunatic and a serial rapist. His sons Tom and Richard aren’t any better. The way they are constantly tormenting Hook and announcing their evil intentions is a bit stagey at times, but necessary to give us a rollercoaster to ride. The ups and downs are very effective to grab our emotions and side us solidly with Nick. I did quite like the way he took down the last Perrill.But religion doesn’t get a totally bad rap. The device (other than his valuable skill with the longbow) to keep Nick alive in the face of unlikely odds is the voice of St. Crispinian that whispers in his ear from time to time, giving advice and warnings. Nick is one of the few archers who pray in Soissons, his first French deployment. When the French invade and slaughter every archer they can find, Nick escapes because of St. Crispinian’s advice.King Henry V is also a praying man. He feels that he has the divine right to the English throne as well as the French. I loved Father Christopher’s commentary about how he’s sure that the French priests are telling their men that god is on their side, too. The arrogant religious fervor of these times is galling to the modern atheist. It makes me shake my head at the weakness and stupidity of humanity. The fact that it still occurs today is astonishing. Can’t we evolve dammit!?Overall though, this was a terrific story told well, with lots of action and intrique. It’s bloody and brutal, but I learned a lot and gained some perspective regarding the times.
    • 4/5
      Cornwell delivers another of his remarkably immediate accounts of battle and warfare from below. This story is as powerful as any of his others but I did not feel my usual level of engagement with his characters. In part, this is because the formula that he applies is too apparent when used on a new series. I did not lose sight of the fictional nature of this tale even though I was deeply engaged by the history.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this book during my commutes this Feb/March. Like all Bernard Cornwell novels, this story was gritty and full of violence. The everyday tasks and annoyances of life in a darker time were in full view. Agincourt gives us an archer's view of this famous battle. Cornwell, as usual, gives us a very detailed look at what a battle must have been like when experienced in the front lines. Great care is given to the details of period armor and weapons, what they were specifically used for and how things like soil condition could turn a battle. The historical elements are also profound. Priests are just men, some are good and some are evil. Yeah, that sounds about right. As far as the archery goes, he hit all the right chords. When you know the things a middle ages archer would worry about on a daily basis, it makes that person slightly more relatable. As always, I look forward to more novels from this fun author.
    • 4/5
      The first of Bernard Cornwell's books I have read. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Haven't really read much historical fiction but this is certianly my cup of tea and I'll be looking into more of these books. The build up to the final battle was good and I felt that the author conveyed the sense of being an archer in a medieval army very well.Sometimes the story felt a little clumsy and predictable, the inevitable attempt of the dodgy priest on Hook's wife and the battle between John Cornwailles and Lanferrelle, but these didn't cause me too much grief.
    • 4/5
      This novel set in the Agincourt campaign and battle of 1415 is a good read, with colourful and interesting characters. Plenty of bloody scenes, of course, and like a number of other Cornwell novels, it suffers somewhat from very repetitive battle scenes with very similar descriptions of individual fights and killings. But overall a good novel based on very vivid and memorable historical events.
    • 5/5
      Agincourt, place where disease-stricken and hungry English army managed to defeat mighty French army that had both superiority in numbers and (foot /cavalry) troop quality on their side.Responsible for the English victory were long-bowmen, ordinary folk drafted to war and “despised” by the noblemen because of their lethality (archers were always considered to be “unmanly”, “un-warrior-like” through centuries from ancient Greeks onward). Story is told from the viewpoint of the archer, Nicholas Hook – we follow him from the day he was exiled from his hometown in England and pressed into mercenary service in Soissons only to end up as a part of Henry the Fifths grand army marching to subdue French. Brutal war is about to take place (mind you life in that time was pretty harsh itself and book describes this in great detail).Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Excellent historical novel but could have been written with a less graphical description of the horrors of war.
    • 3/5
      Cornwell turns to the now legendary Battle of Agincourt as inspiration and foundation for his novel Azincourt, using the archer, Nick Hook (an actual historical archer who was at Agincourt) as the vehicle for this story. The story itself attempts to illuminate the actual events that led to King Henry V's resounding victory over the French, using a fictional backdrop of Hook's family feud, a damsel in distress, and the guidance of Saints Crispin and Cripinian (who speak to Hook) as the plot arc. On a personal level, I wanted very much to enjoy this story. The subject matter is one I've researched extensively and have found of fascination for decades. I'm afraid, however, my enjoyment was overshadowed by Cornwell's heavy hand illustrating gore, and several technical inaccuracies which, for the average reader, wouldn't be an issue, but for me twanged in the way of a badly-tuned instrument. An entertaining read, but not a memorable one.
    • 3/5
      Bernard Cornwell delivers an excellent retelling of Henry V 's fight with the French in the 15th century.
    • 5/5
      Seldom have I read a book that put me more squarely in the middle of the action than this. I swear, at times it seemed that I could see the carnage, smell the fear, hear the screaming, and feel the blows of the poleaxes. It's a rare book that can make your muscles sore from drawing an imaginary longbow, but this one is up to the task. If you are a military history fan and want to get a feeling for what battle truly might have been like, this is the book for you.
    • 5/5
      Agincourt follows protagonist Nick Hook as an archer in England's army as they fight in the famous historical battle of Agincourt. The English army is outnumbered (5,000 lightly armored archers vs 20,000 more heavily armored French troops).Will England prevail? Will Nick Hook survive the day, or be annihilated by the French?This book is very well written, full of meaty writing, fast paced and energetic. You really smell the sweat and feel the mud and fear as you read this book. It doesn't only follow the actual battle, but events following up to the battle, including very interesting side characters with very interesting side stories that fit in well with the main story of Nick Hook and the battle of Agincourt. A very well written book!
    • 4/5
      Another of the author's excellent historical novels--describing the gore and bloodshed of this famous battle between the overwhelming French army and the much smaller force of Henry V, but which had the famous long bow archers.
    • 4/5
      Finished this unabridged audio book, a bloody fictionalization of the very real Battle of Agincourt (in the year 1415). Well done and the reader added a lot in the voice characterizations. This has rekindled an interest of archery of all things. This is a reminder that simple characters, simple motivations, straight-forward conflicts all can be easily woven into engaging narrative. The author makes it effortless.
    • 4/5
      As with all of Bernard Cornwell's books, Agincourt is an exciting adventure. My only complaint with his books is that they are fairly formulaic; same story, different battle. Fortunately for him and us, it is a good story.
    • 4/5
      A good exploration of what it might have been like to have been at Agincourt. The novel follows an English archer, Nicholas Hook, from the sack of Soissons to the siege of Harfleur and the climactic battle at Agincourt. Along the way, Hook falls in love and meets up with lords from both sides, including the King of England. The novel moves along briskly but makes time to really establish all the main actor's characters and motivations. The siege of Harfleur drags a bit, but otherwise the novel is excellent.
    • 5/5
      Once again Bernard Cornwell excells in this fascinating novel.Only one thing bothered me and that was that I had read a similar book before maybe from the same author.But my memory deserts me.
    • 5/5
      Cornwell has done it again. Well researched, captivatingly told, and beautifully spun into a tale of one yeoman archer in king Henry's army.
    • 4/5
      Interesting historical novel, well written, and he gives you
      the real history after the end of the novel.
    • 5/5
      "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother" Henry VWhat would you do if you heard voices in your head telling you what to do, would you follow them?Nick Hook does and they lead him on a journey across England and France. He tries to make up for past mistakes, to make ammends and earn redemption in order to deserve a chance at life and at love. His bravery and strength make him the perfect archer in King Henry V's army and lands him at one of the most famous battles of all time- Agincourt!Great read for guys or girls, especially for history buffs and fans of Shakespeare's Henry V like myself. A thrilling read that kept me turning the pages. My only compaint is that I wanted it to go on...
    • 5/5
      If you are a fan of Sharpe's Rifle and the historical settings the the author interlaces with the main characters you think if Agincourt an old friend. The novel begins in the English country side and ends in France where the readerfollows the life of an English archer caught up in petty intrigues and great battles.
    • 5/5
      Exceptional historical fiction set in the reign of Henry V, this book gives an account of some of the key battles between England and France, culminating at Agincourt. Mr. Cornwell's excellence lies in his thorough and detailed research and in a style of writing that allows the reader to immerse themselves in the historical period. His descriptions of battles are relentless and, at times, perhaps a bit too graphic for some readers. His characters are utterly believable, his settings flawless, his story compelling. Highly recommended for those who enjoy solid historical fiction.
    • 4/5
      I have enjoyed this novel. I like the way it is written, enjoy the characters, and feel that it is written for either men or women.
    • 3/5
      Lazy person's review: A Bernard Cornwell book and a good example of his work.

      Slightly less lazy version: Cornwell does historical fiction quite well. This time he takes us to Agincourt (very similar to the Grail series, just a generation later. Same archers, politics, tactics, and church influence as the earlier series.) Cornwell takes us through Henry V's famous campaign and unlikely victory, highlighting the weapons and tactics that made victory possible.

      On a related note, Cornwell's next book will be a return to the Grail series, so he must be happily geeking out on archers' tactics in medieval Europe.
    • 5/5
      I'm halfway through this book and find it hard to put down, very interesting story and will keep your interest. I read Cornwell's book on Stonehenge as well, another great historical fiction book. Agincourt took my interest from seeing the Henry VIII film based on Shakespear's work, the movie was fantastic and this book so far is as well. For those into historical fiction, I think you would enjoy this book, it has some interesting information on how the archers lived and applied their craft.
    • 4/5
      “Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell is a thoroughly researched engaging historical novel in a similar vein to other adventure novels from Mr. Cornwell. However, “Agincourt” did not capture my enthusiasm and enthrall me like Mr. Cornwell’s other works have in the past. The story felt too much like recipe and although the final battles are quite realistic and detailed, for me they didn’t have the brutal piquant I’ve come to love from Mr. Cornwell.