altered what it meant to be English.' Morris begins with a concise overview of Anglo-Saxon history in England and of Norman history in Normandy up to the time of the conquest, introducing key cultural factors (including English ships, earls, and political murders, Norman castles, counts, and religious reforms, and chaotic succession conflicts in both lands) and figures (including AEthelred the Ill-Advised, King Canute, Emma, wife to both kings, Earl Godwine, Edward the Confessor, Robert Duke of Normandy, and his son William the Bastard). Marc Morris' The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England (2012) is an absorbing book, demonstrating how the 'new set of attitudes and morals, which impinged on everything from warfare to politics to religion to law. Language, law, architecture, and even attitudes toward life itself were altered forever by the coming of the Normans.Ī Balanced, Entertaining, and Informative History This is a tale of powerful drama, repression, and seismic social change: the Battle of Hastings itself the sudden introduction of castles and the massive rebuilding of every major church the total destruction of an ancient ruling class.

Assessing the original evidence at every turn, Marc Morris goes beyond the familiar outline to explain why England was at once so powerful and yet so vulnerable to William the Conqueror’s attack why the Normans, in some respects less sophisticated, possessed the military cutting edge how William’s hopes of a united Anglo-Norman realm unraveled, dashed by English rebellions, Viking invasions, and the insatiable demands of his fellow conquerors. This new history explains why the Norman Conquest was the most significant cultural and military episode in English history.

One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: The Norman Conquest.Īn upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom.

The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris