The performer did a great job as well, especially given the range of languages and ancient words that had to be covered. How the author was able to achieve this given the sparsity of the contemporary record I cannot know – makes it all the more impressive.
Public awareness and appreciation for Anglo-Saxon history is sadly limited to a small cast of characters and events (e.g., Alfred the Great, the Battle of Hastings, etc.), and this work provides a much wider universe and a far more thorough narrative. The last bit is critical to its success, and rare. The Anglo-Saxons has accomplished a rare feat: a complete scholarly text, while also clean and approachable for a non-scholarly audience. Marc Morris accomplishes this goal through thorough research that is well-paced, detailed (without becoming excessive), and comprehensive of the broader Anglo-Saxon history. Wonderful scholarship, compelling writing/audioĪ fabulous contribution to a naggingly difficult period in history to read, study, or separate fact from fantasy. Through their remarkable careers, we see how a new society, a new culture, and a single unified nation came into being.ĭrawing 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. 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. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs, and bishoprics. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches, and created dazzlingly intricate works of art.
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. The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national best-selling author Marc Morris.
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