Marc Morris | The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the beginnings of England

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ธ.ค. 2021
  • Iain Martin talks to Marc Morris, leading historian and author of The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the beginnings of England. Dr Marc Morris is a historian who specialises in the Middle Ages. He studied and taught at the universities of London and Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His other books include a bestselling history of the Norman Conquest and highly acclaimed biographies of King John and Edward I (A Great and Terrible King). He also presented the TV series Castle and wrote its accompanying book. He contributes regularly to other history programmes on radio and television and writes for numerous journals and magazines.
    The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the beginnings of England by Marc Morris www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1...
    The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the Vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics.
    It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being.
    Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.
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ความคิดเห็น • 34

  • @jcortese3300
    @jcortese3300 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    I only JUST bought this book after getting my feet wet with David Mitchell's "Unruly," which is a fantastic 101-level introduction to Anglo-Saxon history. I opened Morris's book thinking to myself that it would probably be denser and more academic but much less witty and engaging than Mitchell's, and I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that it was actually very witty and engaging in its own right.
    The older I get, the more important and interesting history seems to me, even if it's much harder to get my head around than physics. Morris's book is a fantastic guided tour of a period of history with many important insights to give: how a society collapses, how a failed state copes and how something new emerges from the ugly wreckage, how order comes from chaos and descends back into it, and what the overall trends of human behavior are throughout these processes.

  • @davidsoskin97
    @davidsoskin97 2 ปีที่แล้ว +18

    Dr. Morris’s book is one of the great history books of this year. He has the gift of bringing history to life. The extraordinary readability of this work is matched by its scholarship and originality. Anyone with a scintilla of interest in our island story should read it.

  • @DrDeb222
    @DrDeb222 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Love the book. It's so rich in detail yet written so well, it is easy to digest

  • @josephcollins6033
    @josephcollins6033 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Thank you so very much, Iain!

  • @stephenarnold6359
    @stephenarnold6359 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    If the Vikings hadn't been pretty bloody violent they wouldn't have terrorised the French coast, northern Spain and Portugal, Kievan Rus, the Black Sea, etc.

  • @The1Green4Man
    @The1Green4Man 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

    It’s interesting that England and Englishness was never defined by propositional citizenship, but instead by blood and soil. England was always defined as the land where the English/Anglish live as opposed to where the Britons or the Picts live. You cannot become English, you are born English.

  • @hrfnwarian6473
    @hrfnwarian6473 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    Glad I got a copy when I did! 2020 and 2021 have been the best year for books.
    Although my introduction to early medieval history didn't start with Morris, but Roy Strong rather, and his book _The Story of Britain._

  • @pamelatitterington2453
    @pamelatitterington2453 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    First look in, found it fascinating, thankyou

  • @ianwilson8759
    @ianwilson8759 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    I don't accept that there was a complete collapse in the previously Roman occupied parts of Britain in the 4th and 5th centuries. Yes, there's no organised building, coin making and writing in that period, but there was not much writing in Roman Britain. Certainly for many centuries, possibly a millennia, after the Romans left Britain what was Roman Britain was far more advanced technologically and economically than those areas in Britain and Ireland unoccupied and unaffected by Roman Rule. There is a case to be made for that continuing to this day.

  • @barbaraseymour3437
    @barbaraseymour3437 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Very interesting.

  • @sharonreichter2537
    @sharonreichter2537 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    There are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

  • @bryn5108
    @bryn5108 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Looking forward to reading his book, especially as it appears to contradict the steady-state history of Susan Oosthuizen. Am finding this period very difficult to get my head round.

  • @martinjackman2943
    @martinjackman2943 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Wish I was in a position to turn MY speculations into a narrative.
    I believe the Angles grew out of the remnants of the Germanic-descended 'Angarion (despatch rider's)' who tried to maintain the structures calling on help from kin overseas. Likewise Saxons were auxhilliaries- named from their weapon of choice who maintained sea forts and coastal naval patrols
    In other words the ' Romans' were Germanic and largely identical to the people coming in and had been for centuries since AD43 onwards.
    Additionally Pytheas in 300Bc describes two distinct populations one was similar to the later Germanic folk the other was like the Iberians.

  • @barbaraseymour3437
    @barbaraseymour3437 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    What were the people like who were left in the country when the Romans left and were found when the (north) Europeans came? Pagan, farmers (?), left over skills from the Romans, etc.? Normans -And with a different language.

  • @scottscottsdale7868
    @scottscottsdale7868 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    So there was a Rexit? Hmmm

  • @The1Green4Man
    @The1Green4Man 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    36:50 I cringed.

  • @martinjackman2943
    @martinjackman2943 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Wiliam the Bastard abolished slavery because a) Everything in his new colonial empire was subject to him and b) All but a few of the newly subjugated English were now second class .. in a form of what we would recognise as apartheid..they were slaves in all but name.
    Anglo-Saxon slavery was really an alternative to debtor's prison before such places existed

  • @anncolyer6379
    @anncolyer6379 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Anglo Saxon.its either Anglo or Saxon two different peoples

    • @stephenarbon2227
      @stephenarbon2227 ปีที่แล้ว

      It's a label, as I don't think it was used by anyone at the time, but both groups [plus Jutes] were from both coastal, and probably adjacent areas, and speaking [dialects of a] common Frisian language, who led a very similar style of living.

    • @charliereader3462
      @charliereader3462 ปีที่แล้ว +3

      ⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@stephenarbon2227 Alfred the Great styles himself as King of the Anglo Saxons from 886 onwards, so we get the term from contemporary sources, it isn’t something historians added further down the line

    • @tast7017
      @tast7017 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      he explains this in the intro to the book

  • @josephcollins6033
    @josephcollins6033 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Mercy! Modern women and their desire to re-write history; their desire to accuse any male writer of sexism, etc. Of course, "they were not interested in writing about ladies"! This has noting to do with modern male historians. Silly women. I am noticing a disturbing pattern with modern female historians: they want to adapt conclusions and theories according to modern female anger. I am a professor and have done much research and writing on a sophisticated level; I am not a Yahoo. Leave the men alone, ladies!

    • @user-eg5fr3xl6m
      @user-eg5fr3xl6m 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Pretty good Yahoo impression, mind.

  • @SunofYork
    @SunofYork 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Martin needs to keep stuff out of his mouth... obvious props like glasse, thumb etc... Fools nobody

  • @nassauevents2670
    @nassauevents2670 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    How Do you explain about the Ethiopian
    Prince as the origin of Englishness
    Who settled in the Sussex area?

    • @joshuddin897
      @joshuddin897 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Quoi? Quand?

    • @mikeycraig8970
      @mikeycraig8970 2 ปีที่แล้ว +5

      You don't because it is total and utter nonsense.

    • @nassauevents2670
      @nassauevents2670 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Read the origins of Englishness.
      An English historian and constitution expert have written a book and google it.
      You will know the historical fact.
      I am profoundly proud and you will learn all human beings came from a single sources, politics, power, and great divided the human race.@@mikeycraig8970

    • @bork2739
      @bork2739 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      Ho, ho, ho.........very funny but also booring. Odd that the Blacks left no trace whatsoever of their presence in England either in history, archaeology or folklore.

    • @stephenarbon2227
      @stephenarbon2227 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@bork2739
      There have been a couple African remains found from Roman times, [slaves?]. And there was trade eg tin from Cornwall & North Africa.