After the Norman victory in Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror's oppression of the English led to widespread famine, death and destruction, culminating in the brutal Harrying of the North and the deaths of 100,000 people. Did the English submit to the tyranny of their oppressors? Or was this to be the beginning of one man's fight for liberty? Returning from Flanders to find his country taken over by the Normans, Hereward, known traditionally (and erroneously) as 'the Wake', embarked on a path of resistance that was to start with the violent plundering of the monastery at Peterborough....

Edward the Confessor was the son of King Aethelred the Unready of the House of Wessex. The family was exiled to Normandy when the Danish invaded England in 1013 but, with the nation in crisis on the death of King Harthacnut twenty-nine years later, Edward was named King of England, restoring the throne to English rule. Often portrayed as a holy simpleton, Edward was in fact a wily and devious king. For most kings a childless marriage would have been an Achilles' heel, but Edward turned it to his advantage. He cunningly played off his potential rivals and successors, using the prize of the...