1066 is the most famous date in history, and with good reason, since no battle in medieval history had such a devastating effect on its losers as the Battle of Hastings, which altered the entire course of English history.

The French-speaking Normans were the pre-eminent warriors of the 11th century and based their entire society around conflict. They were led by William 'the Bastard' a formidable, ruthless warrior, who was convinced that his half-Norman...

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England is the first study of the Anglo-Welsh border region in the period before the Norman Conquest, from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. It significantly alters our current picture of Anglo-Welsh relations by overturning the longstanding critical belief that interactions between these two peoples were predominately contentious. In fact, as the book shows, the region which would later become the March of Wales was not a military frontier but a distinctly mixed Anglo-Welsh cultural zone.

The book studies how the region...

Bronze Age fishermen, Roman engineers, Saxon Christians, Norman nobles - Fenland has been home to them all. And without exception, whether noble or villein, bishop or serf, they've all had to cope with life in this marshy, rebellious land.

This book is not really about nobles or bishops, though they make more than their fair share of appearances. It is about the ordinary Fenland folk and the many challenges that faced them in early times.

As the small town of Wisbech rose from its humble Saxon origins to prominence as a medieval assize town, it withstood years of flood,...

This popular primary source reader spans several centuries in over one hundred documents. In addition to constitutional highlights and standard texts such as the Magna Carta and Froissart's Chronicles, the editors include narrative sources on the lived experiences of an array of historical actors. All sources fit into thematic clusters on the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, lay piety, late medieval commercial life, queenship, and Jewish communities.

The new edition begins in 500 CE with sources on the Gregorian mission and Viking invasions. Thirty new sources have been...

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE FORGERIES is a response to the best-selling book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts. Using a range of methods and sources, it makes a compelling case that all gospel books of the early Christian era are in fact forgeries largely created in the twelfth century. A number of nationally-cherished icons such as the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels are shown to be fakes. These unsettling revelations, if true, would require a comprehensive rethinking of how we understand Dark Age Europe, and indeed might raise suspicions that much of the history and archaeology...

Most historical accounts examine the Viking Age in one part rather than the whole region of the British Isles and Ireland. Very few pay attention to the continued contact between England and Scandinavia in the post-Norman Conquest period. This book aims to offer an alternative approach by presenting a history of the Viking Age which considers the whole area up to and beyond the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Vikings have been traditionally portrayed as brutal barbarians who sailed to Britain and Ireland to loot, rape and pillage. The evidence presented here suggests a considerably less...