Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
A highly readable romp through about 600 years of history from the end of the Roman period to 1066. I had come across a great deal of this material elsewhere but only in bits and pieces and with most of the connective tissue missing. This joined the dots for me using the biographies of key players as a highly effective hook for the main narrative.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
Very well written. History is boring in parts but this was a great read!
informative
slow-paced
Morris is a joy to read. Does such a good job of keeping us grounded in the sources and flagging what is educated guesses or conjecture.
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
5 stars.
I am absolutely fascinated by medieval history, but have read much more about after the millennium than before.
This book was so well done. There are a million different characters whose names are the same, similar, and/or unrecognizable to the modern tongue. Yet the author does such a good job at keeping them all straight.
After finishing this, I immediately went out and bought his book on the Norman Conquest.
I am absolutely fascinated by medieval history, but have read much more about after the millennium than before.
This book was so well done. There are a million different characters whose names are the same, similar, and/or unrecognizable to the modern tongue. Yet the author does such a good job at keeping them all straight.
After finishing this, I immediately went out and bought his book on the Norman Conquest.
4.5
A few slow parts but as a whole this is a story told very well and filled with some fantastic information. I never realized how much English nationalism had affected our view of the Anglo-Saxon Era. Although I knew thr Vikings had been almost literally demonized by contemporary Christains (not that they were less brutal than their neighbors), I did not realize the full extent to which the Normans had been unjustly portrayed as barbaric opportunistic reavers who annihilated all the progress of Noble English civilization (a load of crap). I very much appreciated that Morris used so many kinds of evidence to fully transport the reader to the Era and provide a great picture of what Anglo-Saxon England was like and how it changed over time
A few slow parts but as a whole this is a story told very well and filled with some fantastic information. I never realized how much English nationalism had affected our view of the Anglo-Saxon Era. Although I knew thr Vikings had been almost literally demonized by contemporary Christains (not that they were less brutal than their neighbors), I did not realize the full extent to which the Normans had been unjustly portrayed as barbaric opportunistic reavers who annihilated all the progress of Noble English civilization (a load of crap). I very much appreciated that Morris used so many kinds of evidence to fully transport the reader to the Era and provide a great picture of what Anglo-Saxon England was like and how it changed over time