Edoardo Albert is a Sinhala/Italo/Tamil writer specialising in Anglo-Saxon and Islamic history. He suspects there isn’t another. (The surname? From the Sri Lankan half of the family, via an attempt to ingratiate ourselves with the colonial masters in the Victorian era.)

Reading his writing once reduced a friend to helpless, rolling-on-the-floor, holding-his-stomach laughter. Unfortunately, the friend was reading the draft of Edoardo’s proposed lonely-hearts ad. He might have given up writing there and then, if not for no less a writer than Bernard Cornwell lavishing praise (‘a splendid novel’) on his first book.

Edoardo’s interest in the Kingdom of Northumbria was provoked by his brother-in-law’s excavations in and around Bamburgh Castle. A confirmed Londoner, he’d seldom been north of Watford before. Now he is happy to confirm that the world does not, in fact, end somewhere around Junction 10 of the M1.

His latest book, Warrior: a life of war in Anglo-Saxon Britain, was published by Granta in October 2019.