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

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The book is beautifully written, pushing at the very limits of our ability to understand the early medieval world” - British Archaeology Out there amid heath and hedgerow the tombs of unknown kings lie forgotten beneath stands of ash and birch – the graves of heroes whose names once rang beside hall-fires, whose horns once echoed in the hills; swords rusted, gold torn by the plough, treasure scattered over fields. Bones are dislodged from resting places, gnawed by foxes, badgers, rats; tossed and broken by grey roots questing among the dead. And still the lords of the lost realms slumber on.

Thomas Williams has blended a potent brew of mythic and material fragments to raise forgotten kings & queens (and their stories) from the grave. An historian not afraid of the dark and with eyes adapted to it - what he sees is assessed sagely and described beautifully' A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages ... [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain, uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of nine kingdoms that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with saints and gods and miracles, with giants and battles and the ruin of cities. Why did some realms – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – prosper while these nine fell? Williams has a fine command of the literary, administrative, religious and archaeological sources of early medieval Britain. He is a diligent scholar and a likeable writer' Sunday Times 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 beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.

Williams, refreshingly, is unafraid to swim against the tide of scholarly orthodoxy. The still endlessly restated modern contention that the fall of the Roman Empire was not a violent and bloody process, involving an awful lot of warfare, but all about peaceful compromise and accommodation – a position whose flaws were exposed some years ago by Bryan Ward-Perkins in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization – is given short shrift as no more than an ideological construction by scholars living in the exceptional circumstance of the absence of conventional war in Europe and America after the Second World War. This pacification of the past always had the logic of suggesting the Quisling regime “proved” the Norwegian campaign never happened. Williams also, again unlike many of his colleagues, does not feel the need to inflate the importance of his subject by condemning the term “Dark Age”, as he likes its sense of “mystery”. 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 A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages ... [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.Alternatively annoying and enchanting; writing which is suggestive and evocative rather than getting too involved with making the few facts fit a coherent narrative.

Elmet (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). T he history of Britain in the period following the collapse of Roman rule is not for the faint-hearted. Those seeking certainty had better divert their gaze to later times – perhaps to the comforting triumphalism of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account of Wessex’s rise to power, populated with figures of reassuring solidity such as Alfred the Great and Athelstan. Or, failing that, they should cling tight to histories of the big players of the Anglo-Saxon world, the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, for which coherent political narratives can more readily be constructed. A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is PoliticsFrom the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.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.You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

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