Athelstan–Our Greatest Monarch?

A recent poll searching for Britain’s ‘Greatest Monarch’, came up with the surprise winner of… drum roll, King Athelstan. Not that the Anglo-Saxon king wasn’t so great, but the winner is a little surprising since most people seem to have believed the ‘crown’ would go to Elizabeth I. (Yawn!) I hope the voters actually remembered…

This Union: The Ghost Kingdoms of England

This is an excellent series on BBC4 about the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that eventually evolved to fill the vacuum left by departure of the Roman legions. In the first episode, Ian Hislop visits East Anglia, particularly Colchester, Ipswich and Sutton Hoo, viewing some coins with Philip Wise and hearing about the Wuffingas, apparently descended from a…

Are we still ruled by superstition….?

Above are the Venerable Bede and King Cnut, who are concerned in the following extract from Medieval Man by Frederick Harrison:- “…Only Bede wrote about such subjects as astronomy and geography; and his knowledge of these was conditioned by the teaching of the Church. As time went on, as much reliance was placed on charms as…

Another Anglo-Saxon find?

This Cambridge article reveals a little about the possible early Christian burial site near Sutton Hoo, first discovered nearly eighty years ago and which probably contains Richard’s collateral ancestor Raedwald.

The Packaging of History: Why We Must Keep Writing About History

Recently, I became Librarian to the Non-Fiction Library of the Richard III Society’s American Branch. It is a great privilege to be entrusted with maintaining such a large collection of texts related to Richard III and the 15th century. But I never expected the sheer volume of materials that were to be shipped to me…