King Arthur's Wars: The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England

Jim Storr

Jun 2016 · Helion and Company

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The story of an era shrouded in mystery, and the gradual changing of a nation’s cultural identity.
 
We speak English today, because the Anglo-Saxons took over most of post-Roman Britain. How did that happen? There is little evidence: not much archaeology, and even less written history. There is, however, a huge amount of speculation. King Arthur’s Wars brings an entirely new approach to the subject—the answers are out there, in the British countryside, waiting to be found.
 
Months of field work and map study allow us to understand, for the first time, how the Anglo-Saxons conquered England, county by county and decade by decade.
 
King Arthur’s Wars exposes what the landscape and the place names tell us. As a result, we can now know far more about this “Dark Age.” What is so special about Essex? Why is Buckinghamshire an odd shape? Why is the legend of King Arthur so special to us? Why don’t Cumbrian farmers use English numbers when they count sheep? Why don’t we know where Camelot was? Why did the Romano-British stop eating oysters? This book provides a new level of understanding of the centuries preceding the Norman Conquest.

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Jim Storr wrote high-level doctrine for four years as a Regular infantry officer in the British Army. He then embarked on a second career in analysis, consulting, writing and postgraduate teaching. He has lectured, spoken and taught at staff colleges around the world. His first book, ‘The Human Face of War’, has been on the reading guide at a number of them. It has been described as ‘a superb guide for how to approach the conduct of operation’; a book which ‘attacks a lot of things that military folks ... take for granted’. Indeed ‘rarely has there been a book as good as this for stimulating thinking.’In a temporary change of direction, ‘King Arthur’s Wars’ then looked at how Roman Britain became Anglo-Saxon England. Yet ‘ ... it contains lessons for modern commanders, and is a guide for all of us as to how to think about problems holistically and logically’, and ‘his assault on ... conventional history ... is unrelenting, thorough, and persuasive.’ He now brings the same approach to war and warfare in the 20th century.Jim Storr was appointed professor of war studies at the Norwegian military academy, Oslo in 2013.