This is a wonderfully done volume. Mr. Morris has managed to capture the timeline of Anglo-Saxon Britain. The text is very thorough with a ton of legitimate references to veer the reader off into areas of interest. He does not go off the subject and confuse the reader and makes it very clear that this book is about post Roman Britain. Some reviews take a star of two off for the constant mention of Rome. Well...that is kind of important. The fact that they documented everything and left a world where nearly nothing was documented is very important to the development of the timeline. The author does make a point to emphasize who did and did not attempt to move this time line forward in a positive and constructive manner. It does seem that he sugar coated the fact that the Church did everything in their power to stymie overall growth, knowledge and development outside its own walls. Morris does a good job mentioning the rulers and chroniclers that sought to make their world bigger for not only themselves but for their subjects.
The fly in the ointment for the Kingdoms of Britain of course were the Vikings. Many myths are debunked and the light is shed on just who the Danes were and what they were attempting to achieve. 60 percent plunder 40 percent migration. These parts of the book leave us with questions about why the Danes were moving and while not giving us all the answers Morris encourages the reader to look over the horizon for the solution.
The last chapters with the Normans come to a bloody roar and a skin peeling stop. Mr. Morris knows where to draw the line in the sand and upon reading the last page you instantly want to jump into the hard and concrete beginnings of the departure of Britain into England. ( )

The best history book I've ever read.
Stunning coverage of the period, beautifully written ( )

Morris' book is a well-written introduction to the period that manages to keep alive a genuine love in readers without being too dense. I recommend it to all my students who are just beginning to study the period, although it will likely be too simplistic for those with a pre-existing knowledge. ( )

This begins with the same subject as several other books I've read on the Anglo-Saxons: the Romans. This is, of course, off-topic, which is a big pet hate of mine. If I want to read about the Romans, I'll read a book about the Romans.

Therefore, I skipped the Roman section. Just think how much more detail could've been included on the Anglo-Saxons if not for this filler material. For example, we could've had a chapter on daily life.

The everyday people and their ways of life is as much a part of Anglo-Saxon history as that of the kings. A blend of the two would've been better.

Much of the narrative is dull and dry, which made me skip several paragraphs.

It's well-researched, though, so if you want dry facts about the kings and churchmen, then give this a read.

The Anglo-Saxon period is, to me, a fascinating period, so on the most part I was disappointed in this book, but certain sections did draw me in. ( )

It’s interesting to read this book so soon after The First Kingdom by Max Adams, as that book explains in greater detail the first couple of chapters of this book.
This book is an extremely readable gallop through over six hundred years of history, focusing upon a number of prominent individuals to carry the story. Morris therefore necessarily has to take a broad brush approach, leaving me dissatisfied with my overall understanding of this period. My main criticism is that the breakdown of Roman Britain, creation of a mass of minor chiefdoms, which become smaller kingdoms that slowly coalescing to form four larger Anglo-Saxon kingdoms is described briefly, but perhaps too simplistically compared to the more nuanced treatment possible in the more detailed The First Kingdom. I would also have liked more consideration of the replacement of British Gaelic with Anglo-Saxon language, but accept that this would have slowed this book’s more political narrative of great men.
What Morris does well is the telling of good individual stories which can be linked to provide an overview of the period. However I came to feel that this created a series of snapshots of prominent wealthy men (Morris apologises at the outset that this is due to the paucity of the records of females) at different places and times. The book also felt imbalanced towards describing events during the end of the period, with the second half of the book covering about 200 years out of the more than 600 years covered by the book. But this gives time to pleasingly explain how the political structural weakness created by the Danish invasion of Cnut helped create the circumstances for the Norman invasion.
Morris has created a very readable and largely enjoyable overview of the period, providing copious notes of available references to allow further more detailed reading, but it did read like a “taster” for the history of the period.
I do now want to read Morris’s book on The Norman Conquest, as I would hope that his apparent narrative skills will work better in concentrating on a shorter period. ( )