REVIEW BY CARLY HILTS Popular imaginings of the Viking Age are often dominated by larger-than life figures – kings, warlords, explorers, poets – with the experiences of ordinary men, women, and children fading anonymously into the background. This vibrant book…
Flavius Aetius is little known today, unlike his nemesis Attila the Hun. But, says Tim Newark, it was the Roman general who triumphed over his notorious adversary in a battle that decided the fate of the Roman Empire.
Netflix has just released The Dig, a major film about the Sutton Hoo excavation. Lindsay Fulcher unearths the story of how Basil Brown uncovered the splendid Anglo-Saxon ship burial and illuminated the so-called ‘Dark Ages’.
It was as aggressors that the Irish first made their impact on European history. The quasi-legendary Irish warlord Cormac mac Airt, from the 3rd century AD, not only subdued almost all of Ireland, he also launched destructive attacks on Roman Britain. Another who did so, the following century, was Niall of the Nine Hostages.