Peter Hunter Blair (1912–1982)

Published in 1963 and now out of date; interesting as an example of the way historical writing changes. When this book was written, history of the time under study mostly came from textual sources – Tacitus, Gildas, Nennius, Bede. Thus the stories of people like Vortigern and Hengist and Horsa and Ambrosius Aurelianus are taken at face value. It’s interesting to compare with Britain After Rome, which has quite a different take on the same time period.

Quite dry but a very nice overview of this period. I chose this book for it's size: it's only about 200 pages. If you're doing a major paper or something you might want to find another book with more information, but if you just want a background on the time from Caesar's arrival in Britain to the time right before the reign of Alfred the Great, this is a good choice.

From Robert Herrick to Owen Seaman