The Anglo Saxon Conquest of England
O ovoj e-knjizi
How did Roman Britain become Anglo-Saxon England?
The answer matters. This is written in English. Not Scots Gaelic, nor Latin. Before the Anglo-Saxon conquest there was no ‘English’. Anglo-Saxons gave the world the English language (the language of Shakespeare, Keats, Byron and Shelley); parliaments; trial by jury; and cricket and warm beer. Every time you get into a passenger aircraft, anywhere in the world, the air traffic controllers will be speaking English. So it does matter. It’s about how the English became the English and, to that extent, much about the modern world.
We do not, however, really know the answer. There are very few historical sources from the period. There are also a few intriguing but garbled and confused oral sources, written down centuries later. The archaeology of the period is scant, confusing, and at times contradictory.
The Anglo Saxon Conquest of England describes one of the biggest archaeological finds of our times; yet there is nothing new to see. There are secrets hidden in plain sight. Therefore this book brings an entirely new approach to the subject. The answers are out there, in the countryside, waiting to be found. Months of field work and map study allow us to understand how the Anglo-Saxons conquered England, county by county and decade by decade. The book exposes what the landscape and the place names tell us. As a result, we can now know far more about this critical period. 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? The Anglo Saxon Conquest of England answers those questions, and many more.
O autoru
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.
