Tim Clarkson

This is a good, but not a great history of the Picts. It's not necessarily the author's fault; he provides a fairly comprehensive listing of known facts and informed speculation, but there just isn't much known about the Picts. I would have liked a chapter on DNA that's been identified as Pictish and what it means to what we might know about them.

This book is mis-titled. It's the story of the germanic tribes who became the Anglo-Saxons of Mercia and Wessex in the early medieval period - basically a re-telling of the various versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles covering the south and midlands of Britain. Aethelflaed does get a mention here and there but nothing more than could be gleaned from the Chronicles and with no extra analysis of what it might mean to be a female leader of the period. Disappointing.