The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 - 1066

by Marc Morris

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643135359
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	452
Sales rank:	130,285
File size:	33 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Marc Morris is a historian specializing in the Middle Ages. He is the author of A Great and Terrible King; King John; and the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling The Norman Conquest. Marc lives in England.

Table of Contents

Family Trees ix

Acknowledgements xi

List of Illustrations xiii

Introduction 1

1 The Ruin of Britain: The Fall of Rome and the Coming of the Saxons 9

2 War-Wolves and Ring-Givers: The Emergence of Kings and Kingdoms 45

3 God's Chosen Instrument: St Wilfrid and the Establishment of Christianity 85

4 An English Empire?: King Offa and the Domination of the South 133

5 Storm from the North: The Viking Assault on Britain and Francia 173

6 Resurrection: Alfred the Great and the Forging of Englishness 203

7 Imperial Overstretch?: King Æthelstan and the Conquest of the North 247

8 One Nation Under God: St Dunstan and the Pursuit of Uniformity 277

9 The Ill-Counselled King: Æthelred the Unready and the Fear of Apocalypse 313

10 Twilight: The Rise of the House of Godwine 361

Conclusion 403

Abbreviations 409

Notes 413

Bibliography 457

Index 483

Editorial Reviews

03/22/2021

Historian Morris (The Norman Conquest) delivers a character-driven history of how the Anglo-Saxons developed England in the centuries between the end of Roman rule and the Norman conquest. Though very few written records exist from the fifth and sixth centuries, when immigrants from Germania arrived in England, Morris fills in the historical gaps with discussions of archaeological sites such as the Sutton Hoo ship burial, where a king (likely Rædwald of East Anglia) was laid to rest with his treasures in the early seventh century. Drawing from the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other medieval texts, Morris describes how King Offa of Mercia transformed London into a business center in the eighth century, and discusses probable motivations for the building of Offa’s Dyke, which separated Anglo-Saxon kingdoms from the native Britons of present-day Wales. Morris also debunks popular misconceptions such as the origins of Æthelred the Unready’s (c. 966–1016) nickname, explaining that it wasn’t recorded until the late 12th century and “indicated not a lack of readiness, but a lack of good counsel.” Bringing clarity and flashes of humor to discussions of Alfred the Great, St. Dunstan, Beowulf, and other touchstones of Anglo-Saxon England, this is a welcome introduction to a fascinating age. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"The people and times are brought vividly back to life, allowing the reader to see, perhaps for the first time, the foundations of modern England. A remarkable achievement. Marc's book will surely become a must-read for any student of English history, and particularly of this woefully overlooked, but vital, period."

Justin Pollard

"An asbolute masterpiece . It feels like the missing piece of historiography on an essential period of our past. Marc Morris is the platonic ideal of scholarly yet readable big history."

Dan Snow

"Medievalist Marc Morris has written an engaging account of turbulent times in a suitable and interesting style."

The Arts Fuse

Praise for Marc Morris’s The Norman Conquest:

From the Publisher

Stunning in its action and drama, this book illuminates fully what turns out to have been a tangled and violent passage in history.

A Best Book of the Year Kansas City Star

"Beginning with the desperate period when Roman rule had crumbled, Morris skillfully evokes each era of Anglo-Saxon England, the varying nature of the challenges facing its rulers and the crucial role, almost unimaginable to modern minds, that churchmen played in supporting and subverting its kings. Morris handles the grand narrative of Anglo-Saxon history well. Through this maze of chance, dynastic quarrels, abstruse ecclesiastical disputes and clashes of shield walls, Morris guides the reader with aplomb, providing a survey of Anglo-Saxon history that is both rounded and nuanced."

The Literary Review

Medievalist Marc Morris has produced a deep dive into one of the murkiest ages in our national history. Morris is such an accomplished guide to the tricksy Anglo-Saxon world. Throughout this clever, lively book Morris leans enthusiastically into uncertainty, inviting the reader to figure out the puzzles with him. Much of the Anglo-Saxon world was wiped out by the Normans, but as Morris’s splendid new book shows, there is plenty we can still see, and enjoy, today.

The Times (London) - Dan Jones

Meticulous and absorbing. Where Morris’ book really excels is in its understanding of the conquest’s ramifications for the nation’s demographics, language, and ruling elite."

A Best Book of the Year Providence Journal

"A rich trove of ancient wonders, worthy of many a night in the mead hall, listening to its telling! Yet it is also a book for our time. Marc Morris is a genius of medieval narrative, and I am full of admiration."

Ian Mortimer

Stunning in its action and drama, this book illuminates fully what turns out to have been a tangled and violent passage in history.

A Best Book of the Year (Praise for The Norman Con Kansas City Star

Meticulous and absorbing. Where Morris’ book really excels is in its understanding of the conquest’s ramifications for the nation’s demographics, language, and ruling elite."

A Best Book of the Year (Praise for The Norman Con Providence Journal

Stunning in its action and drama, this book illuminates fully what turns out to have been a tangled and violent passage in history.

Kansas City Star

Meticulous and absorbing. Where Morris’ book really excels is in its understanding of the conquest’s ramifications for the nation’s demographics, language, and ruling elite.

Providence Journal

Stunning in its action and drama, this book illuminates fully what turns out to have been a tangled and violent passage in history.

Kansas City Star

2021-02-20
A comprehensive overview of the Anglo-Saxon era seeking “to see these people as they were…and try to shed the misconceptions about them that have developed in later centuries.”

Morris, author of The Norman Conquest, King John, William I, and other books of British history, returns with another compelling, sweeping story of old England, starting with the crumbling of the Roman administrative and military edifice in the mid-fifth century. The incursions by the Saxons, Picts, Scots, Jutes, and Angles, among others, wore down the Romanized Britons, and conversion to Christianity followed. Morris meticulously delineates the rise of the Northumbrian kingdom in the north and Mercia in the south, where the great King Offa reigned, and then moves on to the Vikings. Beginning with the raid of Lindisfarne in 793, the Vikings ushered in a long era of marauding armies from the north, taking advantage of the enormous economic growth of the systems of trade further south. “The Scandinavians knew all about the rich coastal communities of the kingdoms to the south,” writes Morris, “and they also knew that they were undefended.” It wasn’t until the late ninth century, with the rise of Alfred the Great of Wessex, that the Norsemen were quelled, leading to the conversion of their leader, Guthrum, and consolidation of Anglo-Saxon fortification across the country’s boroughs and restoration of London in 886. “Alfred, in his determined efforts to undo the cultural destruction that decades of [V]iking attacks had caused,” writes Morris, “was also responsible for a remarkable renaissance in learning, and the elevation of English to a language of literature.” In this rich history, which draws on up-to-date archaeological data, the author also examines significant cultural and intellectual currents and the resurrection of monasticism in the 10th century. He concludes with the doomed King Harold II, whose death at the Battle of Hastings ended Anglo-Saxon rule in England.

A welcome refreshment of a seminal era in the forging of the English identity.

Kirkus Reviews