Lost Realms: Histories of Britain from the Romans to the Vikings

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For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. As Tolkien knew, Britain in the 'Dark Ages' was a mosaic of little kingdoms. Many of them fell by the wayside. Some vanished without a trace. Others have stories that can be told. As Tolkien knew, Britain in the ‘Dark Ages’ was an untidy mosaic of kingdoms. Some – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – have come to dominate understandings of the centuries that followed the collapse of Roman rule. Others, however, have been left to languish in a half-light¸ forgotten kingdoms who followed unique trajectories before they flamed out or faded away. But they too have stories to be told: of saints and gods and miracles, of giants and battles and the ruin of cities. This is a book about those lands and peoples who fell by the wayside: the lost realms of early medieval Britain. 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. In particular, Williams chooses not to write about the kingdoms of the larger four kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon “heptarchy” (so no Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia), nothing directly on the largest Welsh kingdom, Gwynedd, and nothing about the Scottish kingdom of Alt Clut, which has been written about by Norman Davies in Vanished Kingdoms (2010). I read until I was part way through the chapter on Essex before deciding that I really wasn’t enjoying the book sufficiently, and this wasn’t compensated by the learning. I would recommend The First Kingdom: Britain in the age of Arthur by Max Adams instead.

A terrific attempt at a history of some of the kingdoms that rose and fell in Britain between the Romans and the Vikings. I say attempt because the whole point is the incredible paucity of evidence: a lot of kings and some kingdoms may not have existed at all. The book is beautifully written, pushing at the very limits of our ability to understand the early medieval world' British ArchaeologyElmet (West Yorkshire) - just a couple of mentions together with warlords or princes in records written decades or centuries after the kingdom ceased to exist. Just place names that once referred to Elmet and other place names that refer to a British church in Old English (Eccles). (There is irrelevant reference to poetry by Ted Hughes set in the general area, but in the eighteenth century).

The conclusions of Lost Realms are compelling. There was no unified British experience of the Dark Age; different things happened in different regions. There were no clear lines between peoples. It was a time of cultural complexity. Angles and Britons adopted things from each other’s culture, as did the Picts, and all the others. Identity was not clear cut and unproblematic as in the popular modern imagination. In recovering what he can of the near-vanished histories of Britain's lost realms, Williams has done an admirable job, evoking the spirit of an age that was both chaotic and creative, from the ferment of which England and ultimately Britain emerged. It is a gift indeed to be reminded that Dumnonia, Lindsey, Fortriu, Hwicce, Elmet and Rheged - faint ghosts of places though they may now seem - made their own contributions to what we are today' Literary Review There are other things the reader wishes Williams had included. What did they wear? (There are lots of broaches, but nothing on costume.) What did they eat? How did they fight? How big were their armies; what distances did they cover? But that is what good books do – they leave you wanting more, and Lost Realms is a joy to read.Alternatively annoying and enchanting; writing which is suggestive and evocative rather than getting too involved with making the few facts fit a coherent narrative.