The Penguin History of Britain #3: The Early Middle Ages (1066–1284)

The Pelican History of England volumes had uniform branding, and promoted their series identity proudly on their covers and title pages. The Penguin History of Britain, on the other hand, seems to be more of a stealth series: I guess they want people to feel like they can read, say, volume nine without having read volumes one through eight? (Good thing, too, because there never was a volume seven.) For volumes one and two, the series identity and a list of series titles was given opposite the title page, but that was it. I was a little surprised, then, to discover that the cover of my paperback of volume 3, The Struggle for Mastery, actually does include the series title, in its subtitle: "Penguin History of Britain 1066–1284." One notes, however, that on the title page, the subtitle is just given as "Britain 1066–1284."

Anyway, what of the actual book? Reading the Pelican Histories, I sometimes felt like the books alternated between good ones and bad ones; I don't know if that was actually true, but it sure felt like it. So I should not have been surprised that, after I enjoyed volume two of the Penguin History so much, I found volume three very disappointing.

The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284
by David Carpenter

Originally published: 2003
Read: August 2026

Carpenter does have a strong thesis, I think. What he focuses on in his introduction and throughout is where the idea of "Englishness" came from: it's kind of amazing, if you think about, that in 1066, England was invaded by the Normans, but a couple generations later, those Normans were English, rather than 1) the Normans trying to Normanize everyone, or 2) the Normans remaining perpetual outsiders. Carpenter also does a good job of genuinely incorporating the other area of Britain—there's a lot about Scotland and Wales here too. And also he does a good job of exploring Scottishness and Welshness. 

Unfortunately, though, these tidbits are sprinkles in amongst an overwhelming amount of detail. There are lots of people and actions in here... but Carpenter is not very good at highlighting the significance of these people and actions of making it clear who is important and why they are. I felt like big deals got the same amount of space as insignificant actions, and so it all blends together. This isn't the longest of the three Penguin Histories so far, but it does have the highest pages-per-year ratio thus far, and Carpenter does not use his extra space very well. Possibly this would read more clearly to someone more well-versed in the period, but as someone who is well-acquainted with the broad strokes of British history but not so much the early Middle Ages, I found I finished this book with little more understanding than I entered it.

(It's interesting to compare each Penguin History to its equivalent Pelican History. Of volume three of that series, which covers 1066 through 1307, I wrote that it was also overly detailed, but I did find its emphasis on political power interesting, something I didn't really see in Carpenter's history of the period. I dubbed it "reasonably accessible.")