Though the author is a critic of Bede and Gildas as well, making me look at those authors differently and reading all the notes because of it which took some time. These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site.

Perhaps I was expecting a history book and this a new hybrid historical genre where history and autobiography are mashed together and knowing Star Wars and Tolkein is more important than reading Geoffrey or Gildas. How do we construct the past, and why do we – like the people of early medieval Britain – revere it, often finding in the tales of those long-gone a curious sense of belonging? Maybe the book is trying to do too many things other than simply tell the history of the small kingdoms that flourished in the years following the fifth century? In Lost Realms Thomas Williams uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of Britain's ancient kingdoms: lands that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with gods and miracles, with giants and battles and ruin.Archaeological and source material driven, Williams constructs what he can with the evidence available and his vivid interpretations make you think.

The same might be said for the frequent over written passages that attempt to evoke the fading kingdoms. There's a lot of "probably" in this book but that makes it exciting but equally frustrating, such is the way of early medieval studies.In riveting detail, Williams uses Britain’s ancient landscape to resurrect a lost past where lives were lived with as much vigour and joy as in any other age, where people fought and loved and toiled and suffered grief and disappointment just as cutting as our own. The book is occasionally verbose, but what appeals is his poetic evocation of ruined landscapes mired in the forgotten past. The less said about the little earnest cringe about the term Anglo-Saxon which forms a coda the better.