This is a book about those lands and peoples who fell by the wayside: the lost realms of early medieval Britain.

This is absolutely not a bad thing in any way but it bears acknowledging since you are not coming away with a definitive history of Elmet, Hwicce, Lindsey, Dumnonia, Essex, Rheged, Powys, Sussex and Fortriu. There are so many times we have to say “maybe” or “perhaps” but that doesn’t make anything in this book less compelling. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.Archaeological and source material driven, Williams constructs what he can with the evidence available and his vivid interpretations make you think. Rather than trying to create a single narrative for the period between the 5th century and the 7th, Williams looks at individual 'kingdoms', revealing how change occurred experiences across the country.

Sometimes a point was made then we went off on a few tangents only to either come back to the point way later or never mention it at all. Also has a really engaging writing style which is great for something which could be dry and turgid in other hands. History which delves into our dim past and shatters the mythology but in doing so provides us with a much more interesting insight into who we truly were/are. Essex (Essex and Middlesex) - East Saxon kings claimed descent from Seaxnot, rather than claiming Woden as most other Saxon kings. The less said about the little earnest cringe about the term Anglo-Saxon which forms a coda the better.The book is occasionally verbose, but what appeals is his poetic evocation of ruined landscapes mired in the forgotten past. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. We really get an impression of the weirdness for the people of the time, living through the collapse of Roman civilisation, abandonment, cities falling into ruin, roaming gangs, the rise and fall of warlords, and then the period when the country was full of remains of a magnificent past, monuments so sophisticated they must have been left by wizards or giants. The subject matter is a point of fascination for me, though, and I liked the way he doesn't try and force a theory but lays them all out before you. Williams takes those places or polities that are edged over or around in general histories - places like Elmet, Sussex or Hwicce and teases out everything that can be known about them plus what assumptions are possible.

It's written with a sceptical and historical eye so there's a lot of 'perhaps' in here, which is better than false certainty. Ultimately, it felt like lots of academic essays about historical places linked together in a book with some historic poetry thrown in. The over all effect, and 'horny relish' is a good example, is of a style that sounds like the worse kind of tv history sacrificing accuracy for sound bites. Adding nothing to the information, they sound like they've been shoe horned in from an over written memoire written by someone with literary aspirations.

Instead you are being given a plausible story for each of them given the information available through archeological finds and the texts we have (Bede being the ever present star of that show). ancient landscape to resurrect a lost past where lives were lived with as much vigour and joy as in any other age, where people fought and loved and toiled and suffered grief and disappointment just as cutting as our own. These attempts at style sit oddly against the slang of Augustine failing to 'shift his arse' or the random appearance of 'shit stained peasants'.

Williams tries to look beyond those known stories by comparing archeological, historical and linguistic sources. He worked as project curator for the major international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend (British Museum 2014) and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He also has an irritating habit of insultingly dismissing anything he disagrees with as imaginative nonsense, while resorting to sweeping generalisations and unsupported assertions to support the historical narrative he prefers. After a stirring Prologue which sets the tone of the book, coming across as sceptical of recent revisionism and also somewhat romantic about the period, Williams sets out in an introductory chapter his process of choosing nine “little kingdoms”, lost realms, from the time in Britain between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire in about 410 until the Viking invasions that are the subject of an earlier book by Williams.A sort of holy artillery deployed in the face of the Northumbrian war machine' describes a famous incident when the monks prayed before a battle.