Short History of the Anglo-Saxons

''Here lies our leader all cut down, the valiant man in the dust.'' The elegiac words of the Battle of Maldon, an epic poem written to celebrate the bravery of an English army defeated by Viking raiders in 991, emerge from a diverse literature – including Beowulf and Bede''s Ecclesiastical History – produced by the peoples known as the Anglo-Saxons: Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain from Low...