The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
When studying Anglo-Saxon history at university, it often felt to me that (with apologies to East Anglia), Mercia was left holding the thin end of the wedge in terms of the big three kingdoms of the Heptarchy. With Northumbria to the north and Wessex to the south, it...
Let me begin, Rory, by offering my congratulations on the publication of Offa: King of the Mercians. A truly magnificent piece of work. The jacket notes refer to this book as a ‘breathtaking piece of historical investigation’ (with which I cannot argue); how would you...
The pair of Anglican archbishops at Canterbury and York have been pillars of England’s ecclesiastical establishment for centuries, going back long before the Church of England itself. However, for a brief period between 787 and 803 England had a third archbishopric,...
First of all, Nicholas, congratulations on the publication of this endlessly fascinating and absorbing work. In the introduction, you describe the book as a fresh look at the subject rather than a rehash of your earlier work, Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons, some...
Why You Won’t Find King Arthur in My New Dark Ages Trilogy As an undergraduate student, I studied the historical and literary sources for the legend of Arthur for my dissertation. It didn’t go well (slight understatement). I was then ‘punished’ for not doing well on...
