A terrific attempt at a history of some of the kingdoms that rose and fell in Britain between the Romans and the Vikings. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.

We really get an impression of the weirdness for the people of the time, living through the collapse of Roman civilisation, abandonment, cities falling into ruin, roaming gangs, the rise and fall of warlords, and then the period when the country was full of remains of a magnificent past, monuments so sophisticated they must have been left by wizards or giants.Williams tries to look beyond those known stories by comparing archeological, historical and linguistic sources.

Also has a really engaging writing style which is great for something which could be dry and turgid in other hands. Elmet (West Yorkshire) - just a couple of mentions together with warlords or princes in records written decades or centuries after the kingdom ceased to exist. Some – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – have come to dominate understandings of the centuries that followed the collapse of Roman rule. Personally I was expecting this book to read a bit more story like from what I had heard, so I was a little disappointed at the hard going and fact heavy nature of most of the book. The author acknowledges from the outset that history from the period is scant, and he makes his job all the harder by focusing on the smaller, lesser known kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon era: Lindsey, the Pictish lands, Cornwall and Devon.Ultimately, it felt like lots of academic essays about historical places linked together in a book with some historic poetry thrown in. There is irrelevant reference to poetry by Ted Hughes set in the general area, but in the eighteenth century). The author manages to create something from almost nothing with really solid scholarship and layering over that with a poetic vision.