John Blair (1) (1955–)

This is a remarkable and magisterial book.

It combines a great deal of detailed study -- and detailed, well-produced pictures and diagrams -- with an overarching perspective leading to some far-reaching conclusions. Blair's argument -- that the built form of Anglo-Saxon England did not, in general, lend itself to extensive archaeological preservation, and that it also reflects a set of social patterns distinct from those on the continent (or, notably, after the Conquest -- with elements of show more the continental pattern slipping in shortly before the Conquest) -- has important implications for how we understand the social and governmental patterns of the Anglo-Saxon period, and should be framed with Wormald's book on the origins of English law for anyone with an interest in the period beyond simply reading alliterative poetry or tracing the broad history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. show less

round 1540 Martin Luther received a letter from a pastor in rural Saxony, asking for advice on how to deal with the corpse of a recently deceased woman who was steadily eating herself in the grave and, consequently, causing everyone in the village to die. It was an instance of a hungry ‘shroud-chewing’ corpse, often feared as the source of disease in 16th-century Europe. The severe Protestant reformer had no patience with ungodly peasant beliefs and angrily told his secretary ‘they show more only keep dying because they are so superstitious’. Luther suggested the villagers be told to get a grip and ‘go to Church and ask God to forgive their sins’.

Luther’s stance marks the cusp of a new dispensation in Northern Europe on matters supernatural. He was trying to establish a rigid division between the living and the dead (his attack on the doctrine of Purgatory also undermined the Christian rationale for ghosts lingering on in an in-between state). But Luther was fighting millennia of widespread belief in corpses coming back from their graves and well-established rituals for re-killing the restless dead. In a contemporary culture suffused with vampires and zombies, it might seem that Luther did not entirely win this argument.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/killing-dead-john-blair-review

Roger Luckhurst is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. show less

Another good title in the OUP series 'A Very Short Introduction'. This is the second volume in the British History series.

I'd wager that many Brits know something about Roman Britain and about Medieval Britain through the udors and into the modern era, but few really know much at all about the Anglo-Saxon Age - the Dark Ages between the end of Roman rule in 409 AD and the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Well, this little book is the answer.

Some of the names are well-known and, I'd wager, that show more that is in part owing to these names being easy to remember - St Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Offa the King of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Edward the Confessor, King Cnut (Canute). Some of the other names are tricky, sometimes too similar, and they are not easy to recall or place in date order - Eadwine, Cynegils, Osulu, Caedwalla, Ecgberht, Aethelwald, Aethelflaed, Byrhtnoth, Harthacnut and so on! show less

A very good overview of the Anglo-Saxon period written in an easy-to-read style.