The Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: The Power Struggles from Hengist to Ecbgerht by Leonard Dutton

Although I had initially set out a list of pre Anglo-Saxon books to read before going into the Saxons themselves, I decided that I could not wait any longer. And although I am still half way through Barry Cunliffe’s Iron Age Communities in Britain, I decided that my Anglo-Saxon book collection was so big that it was a little embarrassing that I had not started on any of them yet. I decided to commence with one that looked like a basic overview and chronology of the Anglo-Saxon period, and Leonard Dutton’s book seemed a perfect place to start. I had initially bought it because I was compiling sources on Egbert of Wessex, so that I could possibly attempt to write a book on him sometime in the future. However, these dreams were squashed when I was in conversation with the owner of a publishing company who has already written two thirds of a book on the very same King. He mentioned that he had translated all of Egberts charters, and that he had discovered something significant in one of them which has been overlooked by previous historians. The fact alone that he was able to translate old English led me to the decision that I ought to leave this idea of writing a book alone for the time being.

What first struck me was how the chronology of events is limited almost entirely to the military aspect of Anglo-Saxon history; only straying into other areas when essential. This was something I enjoyed immensely, as the military history and reign of the kings provides the bare bones of the subject, in which I can start adding the meat later with more specific books. There were also multiple illustrated maps throughout, depicting the current political situation, positioning of fortification and where possible, maps of battlefields. I consider myself somewhat of a visual learner, and can get easily confused if I do not have a map of the area I am reading about close to hand, so this was ideal for making all the information go straight into the long term memory bank.

The Anglo-Saxon has seemed to me to be the ultimate incarnation of the Englishman, but while reading this book I couldn’t help but have sympathy with the native Britons who were having their homeland taken from them. I found myself simultaneously supporting all parties, form Aurelianus and King Arthur to Hengist and Oswald of Northumbria. One person I took a charm too in particular was King Urien of Rheged, who was described by Leonard Dutton as ‘a latter day Arthur’. He was a native British leader of one of the last regions to resist being absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons, which also happen to be my home county of Cumbria. At its height Rheged stretch from southern Scotland to Liverpool, and during the reign of Urien they almost dispelled the Angles from Northumbria. Urien pushed King Ida and his men all the way back to the island of Lindisfarne, and besieged them there until Urien was assassinated at the behest of one of his own allies who had grown jealous of his militaristic skills. Following this Ida managed to gain a beachhead and then finally defeat the Brittonic alliance. Rheged remained independent until sometime around 750, where is said to have been peacefully integrated into the kingdom of Northumbria through inheritance.

Another matter, even earlier than when Uriel lived, was the stupidity of the British king Votigern who invited the Saxon mercenaries Hengist and Horsa to Kent so that they would help the Britons defend their borders. There was also a more sinister purpose to this invitation however. In the previous year Flavius Aetius had defeated Attila the Hun at the battle of Catalonian fields, and for a while it seemed likely that the Romans could return to Britain. Votigern was the leader of the anti-Roman faction in Britain, and inviting the Saxon mercenaries over would be of great help in ensuring that the Romans couldn’t return. A year after this however it was realised that Rome’s decline was terminal, and there would no return. Votigern had already made his mistake however, and it didn’t take long for the mercenaries to betray him and start to pillage and settle in the lands of Kent. The mess was mainly left to Ambrosius Aurelianus, leader of the pro-Roman faction, to clean up. Ambrosius and his successor, King Arthur, managed to stem the flow of Saxon expansion, but only temporarily.

Aside from these two account of the native Britons, the rest of the book focuses on stories of Anglo-Saxon kings. These proved very informative, as kings such as Oswald of Northumbria, who Tolkien had based Aragon on will make the reader sympathise with the journey taken to reclaim a kingdom. Although it is easy to see the opposing side to Oswald’s story, as King Edwin, who succeeded Oswald’s father was only reclaiming his own lands as well. Oswald is also remembered for destroying the famous British rebel Cadwallon ap Cadfan, but was himself defeated after an eight year reign by the great Pagan king of Mercia, Penda. King Ine of Wessex and King Caedwalla of Wessex are two other interesting characters, who I thought ought to have books written about them. I found a short fifty page book on Ine by Ray Gibbs which I believe focuses on many of his successful law reforms. Although Ine is said to have been lacking skill militaristically, he is credited with having an unusually long reign for the time, and for preventing his subjects from making slaves of fellow Englishmen.

The book takes us up to the reign of Ecgbert of Wessex, leaving us at the start of the age of the Vikings. From this point on the narrative of England’s history changes, and so I have prepared a book which starts from the point that this one leaves us. Next I will be reading ‘The Anglo-Saxon’s at War’ by Paul Hill, which will look at military campaigns and army composition up until 1066. Although I decided to read these two books for the chronology of the Anglo-Saxons, I have found myself building a stronger admiration and interest for the struggles of the native Britons, and so I will continue to amass some more books on the post-Roman Celts. 

Prehistoric Cumbria by David Barrowclough

Working your way through the prehistory of Britain can be somewhat tiresome when almost all the information is based on archaeology. Saying this however, it was still a delight, and a requirement to read the prehistory of my own County. Unlike in the later history of Cumbria, the prehistoric evidence is rife, with some of the best preserved cairns and stone circles in the entire British Isles. With a low population and hilly terrain many of the prehistoric sites have remained intact. Only the west coast was industrialised, and much of the area is unsuitable for arable farming, preserving the sites and making the area one of the most important to archaeologists.

The book, although tedious in its quantity of finds, taught me a great deal about prehistoric life and culture which could not be found in Francis Pryor’s Britain BC. My initial thoughts when I had finished the first two chapters were a little negative as it felt as if the book was fleshing out its pages by including a chapter on the history of Cumbrian archaeologists themselves, along with other superfluous data. As I progressed I was proved wrong in this negativity, and by the end I was considerable more informed on the ritualistic behaviour of the ancients, and the meanings behind their impressive structures. It was particularly interesting to learn that many of the Stone Circles were in fact made up of coloured stone, with each colour naturally having a different meaning. Red would mean blood, while the colour white for example has been interpreted by archaeologists to represent fertility, due to its association with the semen. The rocks would aligned in patterns that were designed intentionally to track the sun rise and sun set, including the changes in the suns positioning over the months; making stone circles a form of early calendar. The author also mentions that stone circles are usually found at intersections where two of three rivers meet so that the nomadic people of the time were near to a water supply during their travel to and from a circle. However I think that is more to do with the transportation of the stones, as is the reason for Stone Henge’s position on a peninsula. This would also correspond with the diversity of stone used in the circles, as it would potentially come from many different parts of Britain.

This book is exceptionally well wrote and comprehensive. It covers just about every angle and includes, in some cases, too much information for your average history enthusiast. If you are specifically into pre-history and don’t mind reading endless pages about the quantity of finds and descriptions, then the pages will turn a lot faster. Admittedly there were times when I was forced to exhale when reading about the precise details of patterns found on every side of a horde of 50 vases, but one has to accept that this is prehistory, and so physical items left behind are just about our only way of interpretation. I will finish by saying that this book is well worth a read for anyone who is native of Cumbria; the breadth of knowledge I have gained has further enriched the love I have for the Lake District.

Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Roman Conquest by Francis Pryor

I want first to say that I have been held up over the last six months by doing a large amount of coursework. Many of the political related books that I am going to review or make an entry about were read at the back end of last year. Britain BC however, is a book I finished about a month back which was contained in my pre-Anglo-Saxon reading list; a list which has changed so drastically that I have created another entry to display the definitive version.

I don’t believe I have ever had a keen interest in Britain prior to the Roman invasion, and aside from a growing interest in the Celts thanks to recently reading some Tolkien related work I still don’t have much of an interest in this period. This is mainly because the evidence is almost entirely made up of archaeology and interpretation; mainly the interpretation that every action ancient people took was influenced by mysticism. Regardless of this I felt the need to read the history of England chronically from the earliest period, before I can eventually start on my collection of books on the Anglo-Saxons. When I read “Without an informed understanding of our origins and history, we will never place our personal and national lives in a true context. And if we cannot do that, then we are prey to nationalists, fundamentalists and bigots of all sorts, who assert that the revelations or half-truths to which they subscribe are an integral part of human history” In the first page of the book; I knew I was in for a heavy read.

Despite this I still have a great respect for Francis Pryor, which has probably been ingrained from a childhood of watching his appearances on Time Team, in which he always had the most kindly and respectful manor. The book itself was actually relatively entertaining for the most part, with Pryor mixing in some occasional anecdotes and experiences which both keep the reader interested and provide help to grasping some of his concepts. It is very concise containing the sort of information one wants to know, like the estimations of population in each Age, buildings of stone circles and crafting of implements. One of my favourite and most memorable parts of the book was about the Neanderthal inhabitants of Britain, which until recently was thought to be non-existent. There is one unique subject that Pryor discusses known as the ‘Lagar Velho boy’ who was a cross between a Neanderthal and a Homo sapiens. He proposes the interesting theory that these mixed species may well have been sterile, like a mule. There is so much to discuss about the Neanderthals that I thought I may as well just display a couple of Pryor’s quotes from the book here:

“Neanderthals had a larger brain than modern man, not just in relation to their somewhat larger body mass, but absolutely. I suppose we’re bound to say this, but there is no evidence that this larger brain gave them more intelligence. Indeed, the bare fact that they failed to survive the evolutionary rat-race – given no help whatsoever from Homo sapiens – tends to support this view. It has been suggested that the principal difference in the way the two species thought was that modern man was able to lump his thoughts together. He was more of a generalist, whereas Neanderthals were ‘domain specific’.”

“It would appear that the children of Neanderthal parents grew up faster, and achieved their independence more rapidly, than their Homo sapiens equivalents. Maybe this was a result of their large brains and focused way of thinking, but it could have had a downside, too. Without prolonged exposure to their parents’ acquired experience and wisdom, the younger generation would have been forever reinventing and rediscovering things that their parents knew perfectly well.”

The prehistoric ages are separated into four rough categories; the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The Mesolithic and Neolithic are frequently grouped together as ‘The Stone Age’. These ages are primarily named after the materials that were widely used in these eras. Different metals have different metaling points, and as the temperature furnaces could reach increased, so did the number of metals which could be utilised by prehistoric man. The melting point for lead is low (328°C) in comparison to Iron and Bronze, but it is also a soft metal and so is useless for crafting tools. Bronze has a melting point of 950°C and was occasionally cast with a furnace shaped like the body of a woman, with a spout coming from the lower section. Weapons and tools held great spiritual significance in prehistoric Europe, and this type of furnace symbolised giving birth to these tools. The melting point of iron was much higher and so it was heated up until it was malleable and then beaten into shape.

The concluding chapters deal with the Roman invasion, which was a breath of fresh air as there was evidence based on roman sources instead of just pure archaeology. Thanks to the written records by the romans, combined with physical evidence such as coins, we start to discover several names of prominent Celts. These include Caractacus, who was the king of the Catuvellauni tribe and fought an underground war with the Romans for almost ten years. When he was beaten in north of Wales, he fled to the Brigantes tribe and was betrayed by queen Cartimandua and handed over to Publius Scapula. He was then taken to Rome in which he delivered an impressive speech to the senate, and was thus pardoned by Emperor Claudius. The book is brilliant for identifying alternate routes of research, which made me look for a book on some of these figures of Celtic Britain. I could not find a book on Caractacus, or his father king Cunobeline, who is known for having an unusually long reign of around 30 years as well as having many surviving coins. However, I did find a book on the Catuvellauni tribe which is wrote by respectable historian Keith Branigan, and will undoubtedly contain all the available sources on these two figures.

One of the great things about Britain BC is that Pryor openly admits that the book would have to be much longer to include everything that he wanted to discuss. This allows him to focus on trying to make the reader build an interesting in the subject; supplying him with the skeletal structure and chronology of Britain BC while simultaneously pointing him in the right direction towards more comprehensive literature on the subject. Barry Cunliffe for example is mentioned numerous times throughout the part of the book that deals with the Iron Age, bringing to my attention how much of an authority the man is on that period while also making me extremely pleased that I had accidently picked up a gem for £1 from the charity shop in ‘Iron Age Communities of Britain by Barry Cunliffe’. A book which I will get round to reading once I have finished Prehistoric Cumbria by David Barrowclough.

There is much more that I want to say about this book, and I may use it for reference in the future on a piece about primitive mystical beliefs.

“One reason why British culture proved so resilient in the face of the greatest politico-military machine of the ancient world is that its roots went back thousands of years. And as any forester or gardener will tell you, deep roots make for strong trees.” – Francis Pryor

New Reading List for Britain up until the Anglo-Saxon Invasion

For the last 6 months or so I have been focusing heavily on coursework, and so the reading list I had initially planned was never completed. So far I have only finished Britain BC by Francis Pryor and Prehistoric Cumbria by David Barrowclough. However, I have had time to overhaul the list of books I am going to read. Many of the ones in the original list are ebooks that were acquired by free on amazon because they were out of copyright. Although not having the time to do as much reading as I would have liked, I have had the time to look up the comprehensive books I need to see me through the era up to the Anglo-Saxon period, which is the reading list I am really looking forward to. In chronological order, here is the list:

• ·         Britain BC by Francis Pryor
• ·         Prehistoric Cumbria by David Barrowclough
• ·         Iron Age Communities in Britain by Barry Cunliffe
• ·         The Celts by Gerhard Herm
• ·         Boudica by Vanessa Collingbridge
• ·         Cartimandua: Queen of the Brigantes by Nicki Howarth
• ·         The Carvetii by N. Higham and Jones
• ·         The Catuvellauni by Keith Branigan
• ·         Roman Britain by Keith Branigan
• ·         Hadrian’s Wall in the Days of the Romans by Ronald Embleton & Frank Graham
• ·         The Planning of Roman Roads and Walls in the Northern Britain by John Poulter
• ·         Carausius & Allectus by P. J. Casey
• ·         Later Roman Britain by Stephen Johnson
• ·         Arthur and the Fall of Roman Britain by Edwin Pace
• ·         King Arthur: Myth Making and History by N. Higham

I have made a conscious decision to exclude books on Celtic Mythology, as I intend to eventually do a separate list on Celtic and Norse mythology once I have finished the history up until 1072. Almost all the books in this reading list, with the exception of Boudica, Cartimandua, The Carvetii, The Catuvellauni and King Arthur were found in charity shops. In my Anglo-Saxon list I have tried to acquire a book for every king that there is one available for. Naturally I sought to do the same with the Celtic and Roman periods, but with history being lacking in this area I could only find ones on Boudica, Cartimandua and the usurpers Carausius and Allectus.

Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet by Jesse Norman

I will start by admitting that I have not read a great deal of Burke outside a handful of parliamentary speeches and analyses located on web pages. I always found myself in almost complete agreement with everything he said; his work has a particular type of consistency that most other people end up misunderstanding. Jesse Norman, MP for Hereford and South Hereford wrote this particular book of Burke’s life and work which I am today to recommend. Norman has been highlighted by such newspapers as the Spectator as being a potential future Tory leader. Let’s just hope he doesn’t abandon his Burkean roots if he ever does.

Part one is a short biography of Burke’s life, from his birth in Ireland to him giving up legal studies and pursuing a career as a writer, and then finally entering politics. The book does a wonderful job of painting a portrait of the man and the personality, setting the reader up with an understanding of the events that drove and influenced the individual before going onto explain his ideology and beliefs in the second part. This format appealed to me immensely as I feel people’s life experiences are an extremely influential factor in shaping their beliefs. It also helps the reader to understand the chronology of thought and social norms of the era in which Burke lived.

I believe Burke made the most important quote in political history when he said “Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasoning but to human nature, of which reason is a part and by no means the greatest part.” In other words, you could reason that there was no god, or that racism is inherently evil, but does that mean that mass immigration and atheism are both practical policies to implement? The answer is no, and what Burke is trying to convey is that we should always be aware of the limitation of the average man. For all our scientific and cultural achievements the average IQ in Europe is still only 100, and I would argue the majority of people require religion in their lives to attain a high standard of morality without them having to understand why. With regards to mass immigration it is an extremely foolish policy to try and socially engineer society towards a path that is so far in direct conflict with their biological programing. The mounting levels of debt and the flow of immigration are like two speeding trains racing towards each other on the same track, and the funny thing is that we ought to have learned this lesson through observing the fall of Rome.

For anyone who wants to get the full understanding of the consistency of Burke, and particularly his concept of prescription and his take on the social contract then this should be a must read. A kindle version can be bought for £2.99 on amazon.

Reading List: Britain, prior to the Saxon Invasion

Recently I had started compiling literature on the Anglo-Saxons, and I was aiming to get one book on every Anglo-Saxon king of England, followed with as many as I could find on the kings of the independent kingdoms prior to unification. That has been a mostly successful crusade and I will talk about that reading schedule in another post. It had occurred to me when compiling these books that perhaps I ought to read a history of the British Isles prior to the Saxon invasion, as there is only a short space of time to cover before reaching prehistory. It thought it would also satisfy my compulsion for continuity and order.

This is the reading list I have come up with, in order:

• ·         Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans by Francis Pryor
• ·         Prehistoric Cumbria by David Barrowclough
• ·         The Celts by Alice Roberts
• ·         Celtic Warrior: 300bc to 100ad by Stephen Allen (Osprey)
• ·         Forts of Celtic Britain by Angus Konstam (Osprey)
• ·         Roman Britain by Harry Mengden Scarth
• ·         Boudicca's Rebellion AD 60-61 by Nic Fields (Osprey)
• ·         The Planning of Roman Roads and Walls in Northern Britain by John Poulter
• ·         Hadrian’s Wall in the days of the Romans by Ronald Embleton
• ·         Birdoswald: Roman Fort by Tony Wilmott
• ·         The British Usurpers: Carausius & Allegtus by P.J.Casey
• ·         The Reign of Arthur by Christopher Gidlow
• ·         Forts in the Age of Arthur by Angus Konstam (Osprey)
• ·         Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars by Dr David Nicolle (Osprey)

A relatively short reading list in comparison to some of my other planned schedules, especially when considering the book on Boudicca’s Rebellion is a short Osprey Campaign book of less than 100 pages, and heavily illustrated at that. I could have added more to the list as well, like Francis Pryor’s Britain AD and Tim Clarkson’s book on the Picts, but I thought I would save them for a later date. Tim Clarkson’s books will be handier if I ever decide to read the history of Scotland.

UPDATE: I have just expanded the reading list considerably, although some of the new additions are short 60-120 page Osprey books. Today I found a copy of a book on Hadrian’s Wall which is of particular interest to me as I live only a short distance away from it. However, by far the best book I found for £1 today was ‘The British Usurpers’ by P.J. Casey which documents the events in the 3^rd century when Romans Carausius & Allegtus attempted to set up their own separate government in Britain, and even went as far as minting their own coins! The book is published by Yale and is described by a professor of Trinity University as being a ‘valuable’ piece of scholarship, so I am very excited to reach this book as soon as possible.

Treasure Island by Robert L. Stevenson

I must first apologise for not posting anything in a long time. I had to delete and transfer the blog to this new domain because of its association with my old email address. I have also had to dedicate a lot of time to doing coursework, but despite this I have still been reading excessively and once my coursework deadlines are over at the end of this month I will start frequently creating posts. Some of the books I have read and will post about soon are Jesse Norman MPs work on Edmund Burke, Lord of the Rings/many other Tolkien books, My Life by Sir Oswald Mosley, Frankenstein, introductory books to philosophy, and more. Anyway, in late summer I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and I thought this would be a great book to review to get back into the swing of blog writing.

Until very recently I never really touched on fiction as I didn’t see any value in it. I viewed it as an incredible waste of time as I didn’t feel any knowledge was gained upon completing the book. However, after viewing Peter Hitchens question time performance, a video which has come to be known as ‘furnish your minds’, I was successfully sold the idea that to truly be in touch with one’s nation one must understand its literature as well as history. I have a lot of catching up to do. I had read Dracula a year or two ago, but aside from that I had never really touched any other fiction of historic value; so when I seen a copy of Treasure Island in a charity shop for £1 I snapped it up. I thought it would be a perfect place to start, and that it would be a nice short read alongside The Life of Enoch Powell.

The opening chapters were brilliant. The atmosphere of the ‘Admiral Benbow’ Inn was immense, and I really grew to like the character of Billy Bones, only for him then to be stolen away by the Sea Cooks minions early on. The true genius of this book however, rests on the character of Long John Silver, who is ruthless, sly and charismatic. So charismatic that he wins the reader over at multiple times only to reveal his true intentions and leave you feeling embarrassed at getting drawn in. His shining example of this is in the chapter set in the stockade in which he musters all his wordsmith abilities to squash a mutiny and simultaneously keep safe their captive –the hero cabin boy Jim Hawkins- who Silvers crew would like very much to execute for his continued meddling in their designs. At first glance one believes that Silver may actually have pulled through as a hidden hero and is saving the life of Jim Hawkins out of kindness, but just as he’s managed to reel you in, you discover the true intentions of his motivations. Without giving too much away, his move can only be described as an insurance policy.

This was a great book to read while taking a break from reading the mammoth book of Enoch Powell and it has now found a place in my nostalgia bank, due to my frequently retiring to the garden shed with a bowl of pipe tobacco to indulge in it. I would certainly recommend anyone how has a love of his nation’s literature to get this one under the belt.