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

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I found the chapters on Elmet and Rheged particularly fascinating, however, the entire volume held my interest from start to finish. 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. It does go off topic in places, but highlights nine powerful realms who disappeared while others prospered. This is the world of Arthur and Urien; of the Picts and Britons and Saxon migration; of magic and war, myth and miracle.

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. This is a part of history I am very interested in, and so have at least a passing familiarity with much of what was discussed, yet I at no point felt like I was retreading old ground.The author does an excellent job of reviewing the evidence that we still have of a time long gone, telling the story of people's who barely left any trace is quite difficult. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. Williams takes those places or polities that are edged over or around in general histories - places like Elmet, Sussex or Hwicce and teases out everything that can be known about them plus what assumptions are possible.

Found the fleeting references to some of the more successful kingdoms more interesting than the minor kingdoms that ultimately gave way.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. A sort of holy artillery deployed in the face of the Northumbrian war machine' describes a famous incident when the monks prayed before a battle. However lots of the information was based on lore and snippets of evidence, so there was a lot of ‘maybe’ and possibly’.