'Powerful' The Economist'Fascinating, panoramic . . . Roach brings an expert eye and page-turning energy' Helen Castor, bestselling author of She Wolves'Narrated with pace, clarity, authority and style, Roach's book is a bracing tour of the world that the Normans made their own' Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain'A fresh retelling . . . written with enthusiasm an...

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millenniumForgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in soc...

This engaging study focuses on the role of assemblies in later Anglo-Saxon politics, challenging and nuancing existing models of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Its ten chapters investigate both traditional constitutional aspects of assemblies - who attended these events, where and when they met, and what business they conducted - and the symbolic and representational nature of these gatherings. Levi Roach takes into account important recent work on continental rulership, and argues that assem...

An imaginative reassessment of Æthelred "the Unready," one of medieval England’s most maligned kings and a major Anglo-Saxon figure The Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred "the Unready" (978–1016) has

The first global history of the Normans, who - beyond the conquest of England - came to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.How did descendants of Viking marauders came to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East?It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce freebooters, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. The Normans made their influence felt across all of western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to No...

England's response to the Revolt of the Netherlands (1568–1648) has been studied hitherto mainly in terms of government policy, yet the Dutch struggle with Habsburg Spain affected a much wider community than just the English political elite. It attracted attention across Britain and drew not just statesmen and diplomats but also soldiers, merchants, religious refugees, journalists, travellers and students into the conflict. Hugh Dunthorne draws on pamphlet literature to reveal how British ...

'Barbarians' is the name the Romans gave to those who lived beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire - the peoples they considered 'uncivilised'. Most of the written sources concerning the barbarians come from the Romans too, and as such, need to be treated with caution. Only archaeology allows us to see beyond Roman prejudices - and yet these records are often as difficult to interpret as historical ones.Expertly guiding the reader through such historiographical complexities, Edwa...

The years between 900 and 1200 saw transformative social change in Europe, including the creation of extensive town-dwelling populations and the proliferation of feudalised elites and bureaucratic monarchies. In England these developments were complicated and accelerated by repeated episodes of invasion, migration and changes of regime. In this book, scholars from disciplines including history, archaeology and literature reflect on the major trends which shaped English society in these yea...

The union of Normandy and England in 1066 recast the political map of western Europe and marked the beginning of a new era in the region's international history. This book is a groundbreaking investigation of the relations and exchanges between the county of Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm. Among other important themes, it examines Anglo-Flemish diplomatic treaties and fiefs, international aristocratic culture, the growth of overseas commerce, immigration into England and the construct...

The European Middle Ages have long attracted popular interest as an era characterised by violence, whether a reflection of societal brutality and lawlessness or part of a romantic vision of chivalry. Violence in Medieval Europe engages with current scholarly debate about the degree to which medieval European society was in fact shaped by such forces.Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, Warren Brown examines the norms governing violence within medieval societies fr...

This seminal work of scholarship, which traces the development of literacy in medieval England, is now fully updated in a third edition.This book serves as an introduction to medieval books and documents for graduate students throughout the worldFeatures a completely re-written first chapter, ‘Memories and Myths of the Norman Conquest', and a new postscript by the author reflecting on the reception to the original publication and discussing recent scholarship on med...