The most recommended Anglo Saxon books

A brutal re-telling of the King Arthur legend, this novel reimagines the familiar story, retaining the feeling of weird magic, while pulling no punches about the characters. Arthur is a thug, Guinevere is no better, Merlin is a frustrated sprite beset by his female counterparts, and Britain is best described as a “clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could.”

The first of a five-book planned series to tell the story of the Matter of Britain, this is a ruthless and dark take that grabbed me from the beginning. I’ve always loved history, even a warped version like this. It left me eager for more and set me tracking down what else this author had written. I was not disappointed.

The gorgeous cover is fitting for such lyrical writing. There were plenty of places where the stories made me smile, they were so well observed.

The author’s knowledge of post-Roman Britain and the superstitious Anglo-Saxon culture that followed shone through and it is little surprise to discover that Watson studied Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) at university. He says that as far as possible, he excluded all Norman French vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon parts of Time After Time because the Norman Conquest was still more than four hundred years away. Despite this, the language and imagery are utterly transporting, and I found myself dawdling over many sections.

As well as the Anglo-Saxon storyteller, Watson also beautifully captures the character of the East Anglian boy in Napoleonic times on his first solo walk to Saffron Walden market in a frightening quest to buy Banbury Books. While the delightful mute girl… show more.

Non-fiction history books are hardly exciting, and I don’t assume this book will be a hit with everyone. As a history buff, I’ve never been a fan of the dark era of the Anglo-Saxons, known for its lack of written evidence and relatively unknown characters that made the England we know today.

Yet, Marc Morris makes this book an over-arching narrative of what may have likely happened, spanning 500 years and combining historical, archaeological, and literary evidence. It is a great example of how to write interesting non-fiction without the tedium associated with historians and archaeologists.

For the first time in so long, I learned new historical facts that made me re-consider many assumptions about the Normans, the Romans, the Britons, and of course, the Anglo-Saxons.

This book is the best introduction there is to early Christian Anglo-Saxon England.

Mayr-Harting is an excellent scholar and a beautiful writer – in addition to being a superb lecturer and, indeed, an incredibly kind and generous human being. All of these qualities shine through in this wonderful book, which repays frequent reading – even by established academics.

Mayr-Harting’s treatment of sources is sensitive, and his commentary is always perceptive. This volume provides both narrative and some analysis, giving not only a general overview but also an introduction to the key people and issues that will take readers’ understanding of – and appreciation for – the period far beyond the preliminary.

To my mind, James Campbell was the greatest commentator on early Anglo-Saxon England of the last sixty years.

He was my tutor at Oxford for a course on early Anglo-Saxon history and archaeology, and he inspired me to recognise just how much of the so-called “Dark Ages” can be brought to light via a combination of rigour in analysis and creativity in reconstruction.

Campbell’s seminal articles on Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, included in this edited collection, transformed Bedan studies and set out the path forward for the next generation of scholars, although much more remains to be done – particularly in connection with identifying Bede’s sources and unpacking the chronology of the composition of his History.

If you want to understand the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England, you need to understand Bede’s Ecclesiastical History; and if you want to understand Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, you have to understand Bede. The quest will… show more.

Sutcliff’s characters and stories are always believable—and show her amazing gift to always make her research invisible to the reader. All her works feed from actual history. She weaves a fragment or story from the past into a rich tapestry of the human experience and makes history live again. This tale shows her skills perfectly. Sutcliff uses as her source Y Gododdin, a period poem, to frame the construction of this coming-of-age story. Sutcliff takes the torch of the poem’s attempt to keep alive the memory of men who fought and died in a sixth-century British battle, comparable to that of the Battle of Thermopylae, to relight it through the eyes of Prosper, Sutcliff imagined British shield bearer. A witness to and one of the few to survive this unwinnable battle, Prosper sings a tale of The Shining Company who sacrificed their lives so others could live.

I wasn’t prepared to be so totally engaged by Mr Baker’s cast of characters. Despite being set in the distant past, his people are so relatable, helped along by forceful prose and dialogue. I laughed a lot. I groaned and cried a bit. For anyone wanting to discover the fascinating world of Anglo-Saxon England, this is a must-read!

Don’t let anyone ever put you off any book until you have tried it for yourself. Beowulf might sound ‘too hard’ or ‘too old’ for children, but not a bit of it. Heaney breathes new life into an old tale, making this a sparkling, dangerous, and compelling book. It’s no wonder he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The introduction may not be right for bedtime, but do read it some other time.

Steven has a wonderful way of getting inside the head of his characters, bringing them to life in the pages of his books.

Here he tackles Alfred the Great, one of the most famous of English monarchs. So much has been written about Alfred before, but Steven manages to make him fresh and accessible. Alfred is a conflicted character, battling between his very real piety and the more earthly passions of a young warrior and king-in-waiting.

Filled with action and adventure, The Heathen Horde is the first of what I am sure will prove to be a best-selling trilogy.

As close as we come to a first-hand account of events in the first part of the early medieval period. Writing in the early 8th century, Bede was able to interview some of the people who had witnessed events he describes. Bede was undoubtedly writing from the Christian perspective and he was certainly biased in favour of his native Northumbria, but his words are like a window into the past and how people (or at least the clergy) thought.