Routledge, 2014. — 392 p. — (The Medieval World). This biography of Alfred the Great, king of the West Saxons (871-899), combines a sensitive reading of the primary sources with a careful evaluation of the most recent scholarly research on the history and archaeology of ninth-century England. Alfred emerges from the pages of this biography as a great warlord, an effective and...
Oxbow Books, 2014. — 240 p. The Tribal Hidage, attributed to the 7th century, records the named groups and polities of early Anglo-Saxon England and the taxation tribute due from their lands and surpluses. Whilst providing some indication of relative wealth and its distribution, rather little can be deduced from the Hidage concerning the underlying economic and social realities...
Cambridge University Press, 2021. — 492 p. Early medieval Britain saw the birth of England, Scotland and of the Welsh kingdoms. Naismith's introductory textbook explores the period between the end of Roman rule and the eve of the Norman Conquest, blending an engaging narrative with clear explanations of key themes and sources. Using extensive illustrations, maps and selections...
The Boydell Press, 2015. — 252 p. — (Anglo-Saxon Studies 28). An exploration of Anglo-Saxon charters, bringing out their complexity and highlighting a range of broad implications. More charters survive from Anglo-Saxon England than texts of any other type. In a society in which the ownership of land was fundamental to status, wealth and power, the charters which gifted and...
BAR Publishing, 2013. — 110 p. Since its establishment in 1985 the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies has regularly hosted international, interdisciplinary conferences, especially an annual Easter Conference. The 2006 MANCASS Easter conference titled 'Royal Authority: Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England' focused on historical contributions analysing sources of...
Little, Brown Book, 2014. — 208 p. Who was the real King Arthur? What do the historical documents tell us about the Knight of the Round Temple? It is just a chivalric fantasy? The story of Arthur has been handed down to us by Medieval poets and legends - but what if he actually existed and was in fact a great king in the early years of Britain's story. Mike Ashley visits the...
Routledge, 2014. — 182 p. This book discusses the development of the English Church during a rich and turbulent two centuries of European history. It provides a comprehensive survey covering the late Anglo-Saxon period through the Norman Conquest and right across the Anglo-Norman period. Professor Loyn addresses major themes in medieval history. He begins with the pre-1066...
Pen and Sword Books, 2022. — 248 p. Recent challenges to the traditional site of the Battle of Hastings have led to a surge of interest in the events surrounding England's most famous battle. This, in turn, has increased speculation that the titanic struggle for the English crown in 1066 did not take place on the slopes of what is today Battle Abbey, with a number of highly...
M. Evans and Company, 2014. — 152 p. King Alfred. Everybody knows that he is called "the Great," but few remember why. Forgetfulness is strange, for few men have led lives so full of physical, mental, and spiritual adventure, or influenced in so many ways the lives of people in every part of the globe. The Golden Dragon is his fascinating and moving story, told afresh with the...
The Crowood Press, 2016. — 159 p. The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Viking Conquest by Cnut in 1016 both had huge impacts on the history of England and yet '1066' has eclipsed '1016' in popular culture. This book challenges that side-lining of Cnut's conquest by presenting compelling evidence that the Viking Conquest of 1016 was the single most influential cause of 1066. This...
Pen and Sword History, 2018. — 208 p. Alfred the Great’s daughter defied all expectations of a well-bred Saxon princess. The first Saxon woman ever to rule a kingdom, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, led her army in battle against Viking invaders. She further broke with convention by arranging for her daughter to succeed her on the throne of Mercia. To protect her people and...
Chicago Review Press, 1987. — 228 р. The legend of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table dominates the mythology of Britain, but could this story prove more fact than fiction? Recent archaeological findings have lead Geoffrey Ashe to believe there is more truth to Arthurian legend than previously accepted. The Quest for Arthur's Britain examines the historical foundation of...
St. Martin's Press, 1974. — 220 p. Fascination with the mystery of how and why William the Conqueror came to seize England has grown ever since 1066. However, the picture built up upon scanty original evidence by nine centuries of historians, novelists and romantics is a distorted one, often influenced by prejudice and propaganda. In this engrossing and revolutionary...
Pen and Sword, 2013. — 255 p. Taking a similar approach to his successful If Rome Hadn't Fallen, Timothy Venning explores the various decision points in a fascinating period of British history and the alternative paths that it might have taken. Dr. Timothy Venning starts within an outline of the process by which much of Britain came to be settled by Germanic tribes after the...
Barnes and Noble, 1993. — 212 p. The year 1066 is one of the most important dates in the history of the Western world: the year William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings and changed England and the English forever. The events leading to-and following-this turning point in history are shrouded in mystery. Distorted by the biased accounts written by a...
The History Press, 2012. — 224 p. Arthur led the Britons to the brink of victory but was cut down by treachery and betrayal. Arthurian legends have since been corrupted, leading to popular but false assumptions about the king and the belief that his grave could never be found. Drawing on a vast range of sources and new translations of early British and Gaelic poetry, Arthur...
Inner Traditions, 2017. — 288 p. Few legends have had the enduring influence of those surrounding King Arthur. Many believe the stories are based on historical truth. For others Arthur represents the archetype of the brilliant monarch reigning over a fairy-tale kingdom, offering his knights the opportunity to prove their mettle in battle and find gnostic illumination through...
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. — 264 p. Emma was one of England's most remarkable queens - a formidable woman who made her mark on a Europe beset by Vikings. By birth a Norman, she married and outlived two kings of England and witnessed the coronations of two of her sons - Harthcnut the Viking and Edward the Confessor. She became an unscrupulous political player and was diversely...
Routledge, 2022. — 288 p. This book offers the first dedicated and comprehensive examination of the lives of nearly thirty women known to occupy the office of queen in the English kingdoms between 650 and 850. The queens of early England are often shadowy figures in the historical record, beset by numerous issues which have largely confined them to the margins of history....
University of Chicago Press, 2014. — 241 p. From the author of The Gateway to the Middle Ages, “a fascinating portrait of an enlightened monarch against a background of darkness and ignorance. Filled with drama and action, here is the story of the ninth-century life and times of Alfred—warrior, conqueror, lawmaker, scholar, and the only king whom England has ever called “The...
I.B. Tauris, 2018. — 289 p. With a past as deep and sinewy as the famous River Thames that twists like an eel around the jutting peninsula of Mudchute and the Isle of Dogs, London is one of the world's greatest and most resilient cities. Born beside the sludge and the silt of the meandering waterway that has always been its lifeblood, it has weathered invasion, flood,...
The History Press, 2022. — 168 p. Cornwall has long held a mysterious allure to visitors. At once part of England and yet utterly foreign too. This book is the first to explore the true origins, free from Arthurian mythology, of this dichotomy. Just how did a kingdom of native Romano-Britons hold out against the expanding power of the Saxon Kings of Wessex and eventually secure...
Amberley Publishing, 2022. — 320 p. The most powerful dynasty behind the throne of Anglo-Saxon England, shedding new light on events such as the Battle of Hastings. The Godwin dynasty dominated English politics for more than forty years. Earl Godwin established himself as Cnut’s most senior advisor, and continued that role under Edward the Confessor, seeing his daughter Edith...
Routledge, 2022. — 288 p. This book offers the first dedicated and comprehensive examination of the lives of nearly thirty women known to occupy the office of queen in the English kingdoms between 650 and 850. The queens of early England are often shadowy figures in the historical record, beset by numerous issues which have largely confined them to the margins of history....
Amberley, 2009. — 232 p. The Anglo-Saxon era is one of the most important in English history, covering the period from the end of Roman authority in the British Isles to the Norman Conquest of 1066 in which the very idea of England was born. In The Kings& Queens of Anglo-Saxon England, Venning examines the rulers of Anglo-Saxon England, beginning with the legendary leaders of...
Second Edition. — Greenwood, 2020. — 272 p. Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England covers daily life in England from the 5th through the 11th centuries. These six centuries saw significant social, cultural, religious, and ethnic upheavals, including the introduction of Christianity, the creation of towns, the Viking invasions, the invention of "Englishness," and the Norman Conquest....
Seaby, 1991. — 296 p. This book provides a unique work of reference cutting across ancient cultural divisions within Dark Age Britain, and it enables the reader to follow the careers of people as far apart in time and place as the early Kentish kings and Viking earls of Orkney. Entries range from well-known characters such as Merlin, Alfred the Great, the historian Bede and the...
Windgather Press, 2018. — 164 p. Anglo-Saxon farming has traditionally been seen as the wellspring of English agriculture, setting the pattern for 1000 years to come – but it was more important than that. A rich harvest of archaeological data is now revealing the untold story of agricultural innovation, the beginnings of a revolution, in the age of Bede. Armed with a powerful...
Cambridge University Press, 2021. — 492 p. Early medieval Britain saw the birth of England, Scotland and of the Welsh kingdoms. Naismith's introductory textbook explores the period between the end of Roman rule and the eve of the Norman Conquest, blending an engaging narrative with clear explanations of key themes and sources. Using extensive illustrations, maps and selections...
Cornell University Press, 2018. — 282 p. When Christianity spread from its Mediterranean base into the Germanic and Celtic north, it initiated profound changes, particularly in kinship relations and sexual mores. Joseph H. Lynch traces the introduction and assimilation of the concept of spiritual kinship into Anglo-Saxon England. Covering the years 597 to 1066, he shows how...
Oxbow Books, 2016. — 288 p. There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider...
British Academy, 2010. — 400 p. Although there has been much recent interest in the interaction of England and Ireland in the Viking Age, the links between the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish in the period before 800 have been much less studied. This collection of essays provides the first interdisciplinary assessment of these connections. The essays range widely in their scope....
Apollo, 2021. — 480 p. Somewhere in the shadow time between the departure of the Roman legions in the early fifth century and the arrival in Kent of Augustine's Christian mission at the end of the sixth, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what? In The First Kingdom, Max Adams scrutinizes the narrative of this period handed down to us by...
Bretwalda Books, 2017. — 32 p. A much overlooked Dark Age battle brought to life. Fought between the Kingdom of Mercia and the Kingdom of Kent, this was a surprise victory for Kent due to careful tactical arrangements. The battle fought at Otford in Kent pitched King Egbert II of Kent against a much larger invading army of Mercians. The invaders sought to outflank the main...
Bretwalda Books, 2012. — 48 p. In the chaos that engulfed Britain after the “Age of Arthur”, one battle stands out. This was a key battle fought in the heart of the Dark Ages for control of southern Britain that pitched the King of Kent against the leader of the Romano-Britons. The victory won here decided the fate of Britain for a generation. Fought across what is now built up...
Bretwalda Books, 2016. — 32 p. An army of pagan English warriors stormed into Devon in the year 661 determined to crush the Christian state of Dumnonia and capture the wealthy city of Exeter. The climactic battle was fought at Posbury at what was then an impressive hillfort where the blood flowed freely and the fate of nations was decided. This book brings an exciting new look...
Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. — 272 p. The Norman Conquest is one of the most momentous events in English history and its consequences changed England forever. Indeed, the Battle of Hastings and its aftermath nearly wiped out the leading families of Anglo-Saxon England – so what happened to the children this conflict left behind?Conquered offers a fresh take on the Norman Conquest...
Lulu Books, 2018. — 248 p. This book studies the rise and fall of this kingdom, beginning with the Romano-Celtic-Germanic beginnings of British statehood, and with the seven forerunners of the All-English kingdom formed at the coming of the Roman missionaries to England in the year 597. We shall trace the struggle to attain symphony first on a provincial level, that of the...
University of Toronto Press, 2012. — 316 p. Narratives of monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England depict individuals as responsible agents in the assumption and performance of religious identities. To modern eyes, however, many of the 'choices' they make would actually appear to be compulsory. 'Stealing Obedience' explores how a Christian notion of agent action - where freedom...
Manchester University Press, 1996. — 256 p. A collection of 13 papers from a conference in May 1989 in Manchester, England, exploring aspects of the early 10th-century manuscript Burghal Hidage, which contains important information on the 33 places for which it lists the number of hides to be paid as tax. After a bibliographical review of previous studies and an edition and...
Russell and Russell, 1963. — 436 p. First published in 1905, H. Munro Chadwick's Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions applied his study of philology to a re-analysis of the historical evidence for early English law and administration. In the first part he examines the development of the monetary and social systems, coming to some controversial interpretations. The second part of...
Cambridge University Press, 1980. — 317 p. — (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series 13). The reign of Æthelred 'the Unready' (978-1016) is known to us mainly from a series of annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written at or after its close and accordingly conveying an impression of gathering doom as Viking armies ravaged the country and eventually,...
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. — 320 p. Sometime before the middle of the twelfth century, an anonymous English writer composed the Leges Edwardi, a treatise purporting to contain the laws that had been in force under the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), cousin of William the Conqueror. The laws were said to have been spoken to William shortly after...
Oxford University Press, 2004. — 252 p. A treacherous murder in northern England on an early spring day in 1016 is used to introduce readers to the world of the aristocratic men and women of Anglo-Saxon England, their violence, their piety, their assumptions and experiences, their hopes and fears. In this book, award-winning author Richard Fletcher illuminates English society...
University of Toronto Press, 2014. — 297 p. The King's Body investigates the role of royal bodies, funerals, and graves in English succession debates from the death of Alfred the Great in 899 through the Norman Conquest in 1066. Using contemporary texts and archaeological evidence, Nicole Marafioti reconstructs the political activity that accompanied kings' burials, to...
Brepols Publishers, 2009. — 475 p. Saints Edith and Aethelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience narrates the lives of two Anglo-Saxon princesses who were venerated as saints long after their deaths. St Edith, the daughter of King Edgar, was renowned as a patron of the arts and the church during her lifetime; her posthumous miracles included...
Cambridge University Press, 1963. — 374 p. On the Northern British Section in Nennius. Some Observations on the Historia Regum Attributed to Symeon of Durham. The Earliest Life of St Gregory the Great, Written by a Whitby Monk. The Conversion of Northumbria: A Comparison of Sources. The Battle of Chester: A Study of Sources. Bede, St Colmán and the Irish Abbey of Mayo. ‘Dewi...
Cambridge University Press, 1962. — 425 p. Between the end of the Roman occupation and the coming of the Normans England was settled by Germanic races; the kingdom as a political unit was created, heathenism yielded to a vigorous Christian Church, superb works of art were made, and the English language — spoken and written — took its form. These origins of the English heritage...
University of Toronto Press, 2021. — 400 p. From the eighth century to the turn of the millennium, East Anglia had a variety of identities thrust upon it by authors of the period who envisioned a unified England. Although they were not regional writers in the modern sense, Bede, Felix, the annalists of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Alfred of Wessex, Abbo of Fleury, and Ælfric...
Boydell Press, 1984. — 256 p. Gildas's De Excidio Britanniae is the prime source of our knowledge of post-Roman Britain, but because it is such an isolated text, for which we have no obvious historical, geographical or cultural background, it is a work which raises more questions than answers. Much effort has been expended on extracting historical facts from 'De excidio', but...