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

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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. 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.

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 The book is beautifully written, pushing at the very limits of our ability to understand the early medieval world' British Archaeology 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 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 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”. 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 Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

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 Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) - long term trade links to Rome and Byzantium probably continued after withdrawal of Roman Empire, especially at Tintagel where significant archaeological artefacts have been found 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.The book is beautifully written, pushing at the very limits of our ability to understand the early medieval world” - British Archaeology

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). 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.

BookBliss

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). 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