By Marc Morris.
Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters.
The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters – ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being.
Drawing on a vast range of original evidence – chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts – renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.
Starting with the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain and the fall into ruins, only for more foreign invaders in the form of the Angles, Jutes and Saxons to become the new rulers, that push the native Bretons into the western part of the country.
The books the focuses on those who rule over the country until the arrival of another invasion, the Vikings.
The book gives a good overview of the rulers and the ‘important’ people around them.
Clearly this is a very violent period of British history with almost continuous warfare of some kind. It then continues the story of how ‘England’ came to be, ending with the next in a line of invaders, the Normans and William the Conqueror.
The book covers hundreds of years of history in a very informative and succinct style. In grand power schemes that go on, no one really comes up smelling of roses. There’s a lot of betrayal and people dropping dead for apparently no reason at all!
