The Making of Early England
D. P. Kirby
Batsford
From the end of Roman Britain to the coming of the Normans is the chronological span covered by Dr. D. P. Kirby in The Making of Early England. These centuries are known generally as the Dark Ages, but scholarly advances in recent years on many fronts have made possible a new understanding of what was clearly a very important formative period. Dr. Kirby makes use of the widest possible range of source materials: not only the comparatively sparse surviving written records, but also the evidence of coins, place-names, archaeology, architecture, sculpture and a variety of the other sources which historians have so fruitfully pressed into service in recent years.

Dr. Kirby firstly provides a chronological account of the course of English history before and after the arrival of the Vikings. The Anglo-Saxon Conquest, the spread of Christianity, the Heptarchy, the Viking settlements, the monastic reform movement, and the Danish Conquest are outstanding aspects of a period which includes such varied personalities as Alfred the Great, AEthelred the Unready, Cnut and Edward the Confessor.

The second half of the book deals with Government and Society, Cultivation and Commerce. Dr. Kirby is concerned with the practical realities of daily living, with the geography behind history. Individual themes include the social structure, administration, art, architecture and learning, agriculture, towns and industry, and the surprisingly close contacts between England and wider world. Illuminating illustrations add interest and beauty to this new survey of the earliest English history.

Dr. Kirby was formerly a lecturer in the History Department of Liverpool University, and has now joined the staff of the Department of History of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.