The family of Earl Godwin of Wessex stands among the most famous in English history, whose most famous son was King Harold.

Frank Barlow charts the family through to Harold the last Anglo-Saxon king and finally the crowning of William the Conqueror during the Norman Conquest. Set against the backdrop of Viking raids and ultimately the Norman Conquest of 1066, Frank Barlow unravels the gripping history of a feuding family that nevertheless determined the course and fortunes of all the English.

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'Barbarians' is the name the Romans gave to those who lived beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire - the peoples they considered 'uncivilised'. Most of the written sources concerning the barbarians come from the Romans too, and as such, need to be treated with caution. Only archaeology allows us to see beyond Roman prejudices - and yet these records are often as difficult to interpret as historical ones.

Expertly guiding the reader through such historiographical complexities, Edward James traces the history of the barbarians from the height of Roman power through to AD 600, by...

The European Middle Ages have long attracted popular interest as an era characterised by violence, whether a reflection of societal brutality and lawlessness or part of a romantic vision of chivalry. Violence in Medieval Europe engages with current scholarly debate about the degree to which medieval European society was in fact shaped by such forces. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, Warren Brown examines the norms governing violence within medieval societies from the sixth to the fourteenth century, over an area covering the Romance and the Germanic-speaking regions of the...