Little Kingdoms: An A-Z of Early Medieval Britain

Before England, Wales, and Scotland were created, before Alfred the Great and the Great Viking Army, before even a raid on Lindisfarne, the kingdoms that made up the British Isles were a squabbling, kaleidoscopic mosaic of realities. Some centred their livelihood around rivers, others dug deep to harvest resources from the ground beneath them. There were kingdoms that straddled the sea, others divided by marshes, and some that stuck to rugged mountainsides, or even caves. All these places, remembered now in place-names, artefacts, and obscure chronicles, have become obscured and forgotten, in many cases lost entirely. Little Kingdoms peels back the veil on sixty-two unique realms, listed alphabetically like a travelogue, showcasing the most diverse corners of Early Medieval England, sandwiched in that tantalising gap between the Roman and Viking periods. By using a mixture of disciplines, folklore, and a little imagination, all sixty-two (and many more besides) are brought to life through careful detective work, inventive illustrations, and detailed maps, highlighting the multicultural people of this island and their many, many origins. * Imagine a time when Harrow-on-the-Hill was crowned with a pagan temple, when the commercial heart of London beat not in the City but at the Aldwych, when giant zombies patrolled Strathclyde, and when the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire were a single swamp and the home of eel-wranglers, egret-catchers, and bog-miners. This is the world to which Alex Harvey transports us in this powerfully evocative and clever account of Britain in the centuries after the Roman withdrawal. Made up of more than sixty micro-histories of the places which flourished between the fifth and tenth centuries, his book is both a time machine and an A to Z of a lost age. But it is much more besides. By starting with the little kingdoms, Alex Harvey reverses the standard narrative which interprets Dark Age Britain through the lens of what it was to become. You will never see the Anglo-Saxon world in the same light and you will probably never again describe it as Anglo-Saxon but instead as a multiplicity of overlapping cultures, languages, and myths of origin. - Martyn Rady, Masaryk Professor Emeritus of Central European History at UCL and author of The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe * Much of the early medieval period can seem impenetrable - place-names difficult to pin down now, snippets of fact immersed in a soup of myth and legend - and it would take a brave person to try and make sense of it all. Alex Harvey has taken on the challenge and produced a book, in my opinion, like no other, and furthermore a book that is easy to read and digest. - David Johnson, author of New Light on the "Dark Ages" in North Craven * This book is a veritable treasure hoard of information, derived from archaeology and historical chronicles, place-name studies and folklore, Old English poetry and saints’ lives. Alex Harvey dispels the myth that early medieval Britain was a heptarchy, the home of a people easily categorizable by ethnicity or nationality. Instead, Harvey breathes life into a sweeping miscellany of little kingdoms, some familiar and prominent in our early medieval histories, others mysterious and elusive. Whether it’s in reports of strange weather (mole rain) or references to undead islands (a misinterpreted place-name), the reader of Little Kingdoms will find more than a little to explore in a richly complex medieval Britain. - Hana Videen, author of The Deor Hord: An Old English Bestiary * Post-Roman Britain is a land of myth, legend and wonder for many, and a true dark age for others. A place which could easily sit in the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien, not surprising given it was the inspiration for many of his best-known plot lines. Yet here Alex Harvey skilfully brings this little-known period of British history to vibrant life, showing in striking detail how events then set in place the multiple identities of Britain today. Using true academic rigour, matched with a wonderful ability to tell a story, he introduces readers to kingdoms large and small, some only short-lived but many still recognisable today within the political geography of Britain. In that sense, this is also an important book for our age, when self-identification is at the forefront of the national debate. - Simon Elliott, author of Sea Eagles of Empire * Fun, readable and informative, Alex Harvey’s Little Kingdoms is a celebration of some of the most obscure and odd kingdoms, fiefdoms, territories, and settlements of British history. Infused with enthusiasm and written in a conversational tone, this is the type of pop history I love to read. - Steve Brusatte, professor of palaeontology at the University of Edinburgh, and New York best-selling author of The Rise & Fall of the Dinosaurs * I really liked the decision to structure the book in sixty-two alphabetical entries. It could so easily have been shaped thematically with endless case studies, but that would have made the book less accessible to the general reader and taken the focus off the kingdoms and their stories. And yet, while reading this only as a gazetteer is a delight -with its intriguing pen portraits of long forgotten little realms teased out of clues in charters, old poems and traces in the landscape - it would be a missed opportunity. Read together in sequence the entries allow the reader to watch Alex Harvey use his furious curiosity to puzzle out a much more complete portrait of this fascinating period of history, its people and places. In fact, Little Kingdoms invites different readings: by all means begin with a pick and mix approach, then read it through in alphabetical order while making sure to jump backwards and forwards between the cross references. Harvey is not afraid to ask questions that are impossible to answer, but his attempts not only make for an enjoyable read, but gradually form answers to much bigger questions about the past: about settlement, identity, change and continuity - how these kingdoms emerged and disappeared and why that matters. Process is an important part of the reading experience, the story of how we know what we know about these lost kingdoms is half the pleasure. Little Kingdoms shows what can be achieved with a combination of archaeological expertise, a way with words, an enquiring mind and an imagination fed on manuscripts and long barrows. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the period, in what can be made of the traces that remain, in how to do history well. Essential and absorbing. - Christopher Hadley, author of The Road