AUTHOR
Rod Flint
Rod Flint is a Cumbrian living in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Having retired from a career in the British Army, he enjoys the challenge of exploring the remoter fells and dales of Northern England and the Borders, and unravelling the mysteries of local and family history. This is a hobby that has carried across into writing historical fiction linking to his one thousand year-long, family connection to the North. His Harrying of the North series of paperback and e-books uses this traumatic moment in the early middle-ages to bring to life the Northern Dales, Cumbria and Northumberland at a time of great social upheaval and in so doing it explores how English daily life was affected and forced to change.
The series links notable individuals from Rod’s own ancestry with the fictional characters of his stories and weaves their tale around historical fact to tell the story of Hravn and Ealdgith, friends in their mid-teens who witness, then flee from, the Harrying of the North in Richmondshire in January 1070. It follows their rapid transition from adolescence to adulthood, their evolving relationship and changing fortunes. As the series develops it follows the lives of their own family, their resistance to Norman rule, and expands to look at the wider Anglo-Norman-Scots politics of the time and the key moments in the late 11th and early 12th centuries when the North was finally taken fully under Norman control.
Underlying themes are how the Cumbric, Angle, Danish and Norse races blended together to form the English nation within the North, and how strong and respected the women of that northern nation were compared to the Norman society that followed.
The books appeal to adults of all ages, from young to old, who have an interest in history and enjoy a fast paced, gripping and evolving story.
His first novel, The Year 1070-Survival, was commended at the Lakeland Book of the Year Awards in 2017.
