He's not a time traveler, but a dimensional traveler. One person takes his chances on a vacation to Britannia...at the fall of Rome. Can he employ enough modern knowledge to save his life and the lives of his friends? Will he make an indelible mark on the history of this world? Or, will his enemies and his own hubris see him erased and lost to time? Join the Apprentice and his companions on a dark-age adventure across Northern Europe, the North Sea, and up and down the island of Great Britain.
The Arthurian Age; the Celtic Twilight; the Dark Ages; the Birth of England; these are the powerfully romantic names often given to one of the most confused yet vital periods in British history. It is an era upon which rival Celtic and English nationalisms frequently fought. It was also a period of settlement, and of the sword. This absorbing volume by David Nicolle transports us to an England shrouded in mystery and beset by savage conflict, a land which played host to one of the most enduring figures of our history – Arthur.
The story of an era shrouded in mystery, and the gradual changing of a nation’s cultural identity. We speak English today, because the Anglo-Saxons took over most of post-Roman Britain. How did that happen? There is little evidence: not much archaeology, and even less written history. There is, however, a huge amount of speculation. King Arthur’s Wars brings an entirely new approach to the subject—the answers are out there, in the British countryside, waiting to be found. Months of field work and map study allow us to understand, for the first time, how the Anglo-Saxons conquered England, county by county and decade by decade. King Arthur’s Wars exposes what the landscape and the place names tell us. As a result, we can now know far more about this “Dark Age.” What is so special about Essex? Why is Buckinghamshire an odd shape? Why is the legend of King Arthur so special to us? Why don’t Cumbrian farmers use English numbers when they count sheep? Why don’t we know where Camelot was? Why did the Romano-British stop eating oysters? This book provides a new level of understanding of the centuries preceding the Norman Conquest.
A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author 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.
The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. The ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer's belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths. In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles' unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. The authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. The resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology. Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources,Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology.
All three books in 'The Saxon Shore', a series of historical fiction by John Broughton, now available in one volume. The Saxon Shore: After Valdor's friend kills a centurion, they escape from Roman justice in a fishing boat. It's the third century, and General Carausius has proclaimed himself Emperor of both Britannia and Northern Gaul. Valdor befriends Carausius and, installed as Count of the Saxon Shore, must face the Saxon and Frankish raiders. With barbarian tribes on its frontiers, the Roman army has to enlist former enemies, no matter the cost. Will Britannia ever regain peaceful prosperity? The Great Conspiracy: In the fourth century AD, Britannia is under attack by barbarians and lurches towards inevitable doom. Leo and Valdor, grandson and great-grandson of a famous warrior, are rising in rank against the Picts and Scots. Valdor finally gets his chance for promotion after helping the usurper, Magnus Maximus, in his campaign against the Western Emperor. But as the province is left exposed to barbarian incursions, will Valdor become just another local chieftain amid the anarchy left by the Romans? The Woken Talisman: An officer of sub-Roman Britain, Valdor accepts the kingship of Logres, meets Myrddin, and changes his name to Arthur. He's preparing for the battle of Mons Badonicus which, according to the seer, will usher in a golden age for the Britons. Arthur is ‘the past and future king’, but what does the future hold for him?
This book critically evaluates the prevailing idea that north-west European migration was central to the transformation from post-Roman to 'Anglo-Saxon' society in Britain, and explores the increasing evidence for more evolutionary change.
