The Penguin History of Britain #2: The Anglo-Saxon Period (A.D. 400–1070)

In chronological order, this is the second volume of the Penguin History of Britain, covering the period from the Roman withdrawal to the Norman Conquest. The predecessor to this series, the Pelican History of England, positioned itself as "social histories," eschewing kings and battles and dates in favor of giving the reader a sense of how society itself changed over time. Or, at least, that was the theory; I think many of the writers struggled with the concept in practice, and I certainly did as a reader. Often it felt like you weren't really getting a story, but instead a snapshot, if you see the distinction. For example, though I did like that series's volume 2, it didn't really capture how England evolved from the Roman withdrawal to the Norman Conquest, it just told you what it was like overall. Some writers did quite badly with this approach, though others made it work quite well.

I am not sure if the Penguin History of Britain shared this aspect of the premise of the Pelican History of England or not; the "inviolable rules" from the series editor that author Robin Fleming mentions in her introduction are just 1) no footnotes, 2) no historiography, and 3) keep it accessible (xxii). But even if not, it did seem to me that in this volume, Fleming was attempting to write a social history, be it an editorial mandate or not, along the lines of her predecessors: "the founding contention of this book is that the aggregate of the actions, beliefs and tribulations of whole generations of individuals shaped lives and changed societies in very profound ways...; indeed, they did so more fundamentally than the actions of people whose names we happen to know" (xx). Later, she points out that naturally later writers would have fallen into this trap, "because high politics consumed men writing in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, and naturally modern historians have come to share the concerns of our writers of texts" (314). 

As I said, the mixed results of the Pelican History suggests that this can be a tricky thing to accomplish. Even though I enjoyed its volume 2, it didn't really tell a story; some of the series's more successful volumes seemed to accomplish the goal of telling a story mostly by abandoning the goal of sticking to society itself. So, I had little evidence you could cover society and tell a good story!

Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400–1070
by Robin Fleming

Originally published: 2010
Read: April 2026

Well, Fleming gives me some very strong evidence, because I found that Britain after Rome succeeded at exactly what it set out to accomplish. There is indeed little of (what in his introduction to volume 4 of the Pelican Histories, A. R. Myers called) "dates and kings and battles." But that doesn't mean Fleming fails to tell a story; she does an excellent job of giving you a sense of how Britain changed over this period.

Her major thesis seems to be that while we think of the Angles and Saxons as invading and conquering Britain during this time period, there's little evidence of that from the actual period in question, and much more evidence that they settled in Britain and were gradually integrated culturally and societally. Like Dorothy Whitelock in the Pelican History's volume 2, Fleming is interested in the economic power of kings, but unlike Whitelock, she gives you a sense of how that power evolved over time: "Although it is clear that kings were not the founders of England's early towns, it is nonetheless certain that the fates of towns and kings were inextricably linked, because, although kings had not made towns, towns... were beginning to remake England's more formidable kings" (205). She goes on to describe how kings came to realize you could get much more from controlling and taxing town economies than you ever could from warfare (212).

Fleming uses archaeological evidence to push against the political tendencies of earlier writers, but unlike the first volumes of either the Pelican History or the Penguin one, she is able to use this evidence to tell a story, so it does not feel like you are just getting a succession of descriptions of places: "It is only when we look at the statistics provided by the bones of the early medieval dead that we come face to face with just how dire life in this period was; how sick, how sad and how short.... Narrative sources... do not allow us to see the leg ulcers that plagued so many; the swarms of disease-carrying flies; the constant discomfort caused by a gut full of parasites; the scrawny, undersized 14-year-old boys. Yet these were fundamental, bodily aspects of people's lives in early medieval Britain" (365). It's very well done stuff, and overall, I found this highly enjoyable reading.