Lost Realms: Histories of Britain from the Romans to the Vikings

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Williams has a fine command of the literary, administrative, religious and archaeological sources of early medieval Britain. He is a diligent scholar and a likeable writer' Sunday Times

As Tolkien knew, Britain in the ‘Dark Ages’ was a mosaic of little kingdoms. Many of them fell by the wayside. Some vanished without a trace. Others have stories that can be told. This is the world of Arthur and Urien; of the Picts and Britons and Saxon migration; of magic and war, myth and miracle.A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light’ Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past. In recovering what he can of the near-vanished histories of Britain's lost realms, Williams has done an admirable job, evoking the spirit of an age that was both chaotic and creative, from the ferment of which England and ultimately Britain emerged. It is a gift indeed to be reminded that Dumnonia, Lindsey, Fortriu, Hwicce, Elmet and Rheged - faint ghosts of places though they may now seem - made their own contributions to what we are today' Literary Review In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams eschews such well-trodden paths, turning instead to ‘scraps of legend and ambiguous archaeological traces’ to tell ‘the stories of the most obscure kingdoms to have risen in Britain in the dim post-Roman dawn’. These are the marginalia of history. The histories of these kingdoms can be assembled only from overlooked fragments and half-forgotten whispers. Their shadowy rulers, with their penchant for ‘weapons and glassware, drinking horns and gaming pieces’, lived in the three hundred years or so from the mid-fifth century on, a time for which sources are few. Of one of these will-o’-the-wisp states, situated somewhere around modern Yorkshire, Williams notes, ‘by the time anyone wrote of Elmet it was already gone’. The realm is now recalled in just a few place names, an inscription on a standing stone and a few Welsh poems, including Y Gododdin, which mentions a certain Madog, a warrior from Elmet, who perished in battle against the invading Anglo-Saxons. As Tolkien knew, Britain in the ‘Dark Ages’ was an untidy mosaic of kingdoms. Some – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – have come to dominate understandings of the centuries that followed the collapse of Roman rule. Others, however, have been left to languish in a half-light¸ forgotten kingdoms who followed unique trajectories before they flamed out or faded away. But they too have stories to be told: of saints and gods and miracles, of giants and battles and the ruin of cities. This is a book about those lands and peoples who fell by the wayside: the lost realms of early medieval Britain.

In recovering what he can of the near-vanished histories of Britain’s lost realms, Williams has done an admirable job, evoking the spirit of an age that was both chaotic and creative, from the ferment of which England and ultimately Britain emerged. It is a gift indeed to be reminded that Dumnonia, Lindsey, Fortriu, Hwicce, Elmet and Rheged - faint ghosts of places though they may now seem - made their own contributions to what we are today” - Literary Review The book is beautifully written, pushing at the very limits of our ability to understand the early medieval world' British Archaeology As Tolkien knew, Britain in the 'Dark Ages' was a mosaic of little kingdoms. Many of them fell by the wayside. Some vanished without a trace. Others have stories that can be told. A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is PoliticsWith so few facts to make generalisations, the author appears happy to meander off-topic, for example to discuss differences between the calculation of the date of Easter between Roman and British Christians. They can be interesting facts, but probably read many times already by readers about this period. T he history of Britain in the period following the collapse of Roman rule is not for the faint-hearted. Those seeking certainty had better divert their gaze to later times – perhaps to the comforting triumphalism of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account of Wessex’s rise to power, populated with figures of reassuring solidity such as Alfred the Great and Athelstan. Or, failing that, they should cling tight to histories of the big players of the Anglo-Saxon world, the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, for which coherent political narratives can more readily be constructed. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

After the legions left, savage Picts swarmed over Hadrian’s Wall, piratical Scotti crossed the Irish Sea in coracles, and Arthur fought a heroic but doomed struggle to save civilised Roman Britain from hordes of barbaric Anglo-Saxons from the continent. The popular understanding of Britain AD400-800 is a straightforward, four-cornered dogfight between easily distinguished peoples. Thomas Williams’s Lost Realms: Histories of Britain from the Romans to the Vikings shows reality was far messier and more complex, and thus far more interesting. It's written with a sceptical and historical eye so there's a lot of 'perhaps' in here, which is better than false certainty. They style is great too, very lively, with a couple of exceptionally good jokes including one that had me swearing and posting on Bluesky. I read until I was part way through the chapter on Essex before deciding that I really wasn’t enjoying the book sufficiently, and this wasn’t compensated by the learning. I would recommend The First Kingdom: Britain in the age of Arthur by Max Adams instead. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain, uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of nine kingdoms that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with saints and gods and miracles, with giants and battles and the ruin of cities. Why did some realms – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – prosper while these nine fell?Alternatively annoying and enchanting; writing which is suggestive and evocative rather than getting too involved with making the few facts fit a coherent narrative. A terrific attempt at a history of some of the kingdoms that rose and fell in Britain between the Romans and the Vikings. I say attempt because the whole point is the incredible paucity of evidence: a lot of kings and some kingdoms may not have existed at all.

After a stirring Prologue which sets the tone of the book, coming across as sceptical of recent revisionism and also somewhat romantic about the period, Williams sets out in an introductory chapter his process of choosing nine “little kingdoms”, lost realms, from the time in Britain between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire in about 410 until the Viking invasions that are the subject of an earlier book by Williams. In particular, Williams chooses not to write about the kingdoms of the larger four kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon “heptarchy” (so no Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia), nothing directly on the largest Welsh kingdom, Gwynedd, and nothing about the Scottish kingdom of Alt Clut, which has been written about by Norman Davies in Vanished Kingdoms (2010). This is a part of history I am very interested in, and so have at least a passing familiarity with much of what was discussed, yet I at no point felt like I was retreading old ground. It was well researched, well balanced, very accessible and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, even if I did occasionally mix up some of the people with the more similar sounding names in my head.

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A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages ... [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics Williams, refreshingly, is unafraid to swim against the tide of scholarly orthodoxy. The still endlessly restated modern contention that the fall of the Roman Empire was not a violent and bloody process, involving an awful lot of warfare, but all about peaceful compromise and accommodation – a position whose flaws were exposed some years ago by Bryan Ward-Perkins in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization – is given short shrift as no more than an ideological construction by scholars living in the exceptional circumstance of the absence of conventional war in Europe and America after the Second World War. This pacification of the past always had the logic of suggesting the Quisling regime “proved” the Norwegian campaign never happened. Williams also, again unlike many of his colleagues, does not feel the need to inflate the importance of his subject by condemning the term “Dark Age”, as he likes its sense of “mystery”.