Hereward the Wake

If your idea of a good 19th C novel is one that preaches stoic acceptance of life's limitations, avoid Charles Kingsley and stick to George Eliot. But if you are up for Social Darwinism, Muscular Christianity, and Rule Britannia, you will find Hereward the Wake an enjoyable read. Kingsley is careful to refer regularly to the contemporary sources of his mediaeval tale but Hereward is the prototype of a Victorian Empire builder: fearless, pragmatic, C of E. Complicated sexual politics. "What I have had will still be mine, when that which I have shall fail me." (252)

I enjoyed learning about this folk hero, but the narrative of this book was loose, scattered and uncompelling.

I wanted a rip-roaring boy's adventure tale or, at least, a soppy pseudo-Medieval Victorian romance but I got this instead. It was a retelling of the various tales of Hereward in a partly scholarly and partly in the style of Medieval chronicles and it was so boring I almost fell asleep several times. It utterly fail to engage my attention from the earliest pages and I got lost in the haze of names and places and finally found no reason that Hereward was the hero and "Last of the English". I know this is on many lists of books that I have liked but I should have remembered that I didn't make it more than a few pages into The Water Babies without putting it aside.

The true Englishman hiding from the nasty Norman invaders in the Lincolnshire fens. Perhaps my Lincolnshire ancestry contains a bit of Hereward.

Tremendous read, time traveling back to the invasion of William of Normandy.

Signed by author and illustrator