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

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This is the world of Arthur and Urien; of the Picts and Britons and Saxon migration; of magic and war, myth and miracle. This is absolutely not a bad thing in any way but it bears acknowledging since you are not coming away with a definitive history of Elmet, Hwicce, Lindsey, Dumnonia, Essex, Rheged, Powys, Sussex and Fortriu. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. In Lost Realms Thomas Williams uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of Britain’s ancient kingdoms: lands that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with gods and miracles, with giants and battles and ruin. The less said about the little earnest cringe about the term Anglo-Saxon which forms a coda the better.

In Lost Realms Thomas Williams uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of Britain’s ancient kingdoms: lands that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with gods and miracles, with giants and battles and ruin. This is a difficult historical topic to take on - Williams flat out says that if you aren't comfortable with minimal evidence and the liberal use of the word "possibly," this isn't the book for you. Lost Realms is a phenomenally well-written, often lyrical account of the post-Roman British Isle shrouded in the mists of time.Ultimately, it felt like lots of academic essays about historical places linked together in a book with some historic poetry thrown in. However lots of the information was based on lore and snippets of evidence, so there was a lot of ‘maybe’ and possibly’. He is also however a meticulous, honest and fair-minded scholar, and his careful analysis of that evidence, material and textual, always establishes its limitations as well as its potential. Some – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – have come to dominate understandings of the centuries that followed the collapse of Roman rule. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit.

Perhaps I was expecting a history book and this a new hybrid historical genre where history and autobiography are mashed together and knowing Star Wars and Tolkein is more important than reading Geoffrey or Gildas. I think that the drawback from four stars is a lack of some illustration or visualization that really would have pushed to this book forward. A well written and cleverly structured look at the history of the British Isles during what is often referred to as the Dark Ages; the book focuses on nine of the smaller kingdoms present within that time frame, charting their individual histories from origin to demise. The over all effect, and 'horny relish' is a good example, is of a style that sounds like the worse kind of tv history sacrificing accuracy for sound bites.Often he can say little more than we don't know a lot but his presentation of the topography, local politics, cultural developments and the understanding of archaeological discoveries could not be bettered. Drawing on Britain ’ s ancient landscape and bringing together new archaeological revelations with the few precious fragments of surviving written sources, Williams spectacularly rebuilds a lost past. How do we construct the past, and why do we – like the people of early medieval Britain – revere it, often finding in the tales of those long-gone a curious sense of belonging? Alternatively annoying and enchanting; writing which is suggestive and evocative rather than getting too involved with making the few facts fit a coherent narrative.

Actually rather beautifully written in its account of the people and realms that came and then disappeared from time leaving such fleeting and barely discernable remains. However, apparently it makes him queasy because of the 'Horny Relish' which which Geoffrey of Monmouth described the conception of King Arthur. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site.The author manages to create something from almost nothing with really solid scholarship and layering over that with a poetic vision. He worked as project curator for the major international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend (British Museum 2014) and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Some curious choice of language used at times too, for example kipple, a colloquial word introduced in Philip K.