The First Kingdom: Britain in the Age of Arthur

‘The past lies in fragments… one might just as well try to reconstruct the idea of a tree from its leaves, or an ocean wave from a dripping tap.’ So writes Max Adams, author of The First Kingdom, a wide-ranging new overview of the emergence of early medieval Britain from the aftermath of Roman occupation. This might seem like a pessimistic perspective, particularly when considering a period stereotyped as ‘the Dark Ages’ – but, in fact, the prospects for future understanding are exciting, Adams insists: ‘The accumulated pile of these fragments [pertaining to the early medieval period], gathered together over the last decades of research, is now mountainous’. What follo