The spring and summer months are starting to look quite lively. My next (quarterly) u3a national talk by Zoom is booked in for Tuesday 21 April at 2pm on the fascinating Anglo-Saxon period From the Dark Ages to the Viking Age. That will be sandwiched between a couple of trips abroad to new places for me. On 13 May I’ll be covering Ice Age to Iron Age at Aylesbury Vale u3a; on 25 June it will be the next u3a national talk on Triumph and Trauma – The House of Wessex from Alfred to Aethelred; and I July I’ll be talking, slightly provocatively, to Thame u3a on The Bayeux Tapestry – Embroidery or Fabrication? A week later it is ‘Before the Conquest – Wessex versus the Vikings – the wider picture’ for Wallingford u3a.
By then, although its official publication date is late July, my new book should be available. This is ‘Conquest to Charter – the Resilience of England’, which picks up where Ice to Athelstan left off, in the same style and format. It takes the story:
- through the Wessex kings to the hapless Aethelred to the Danish Conquest under Cnut;
- the background to and effect of the Norman Conquest;
- the Anarchy of King Stephen followed by the highs and lows of Henry II and his sons; and
- England in the reign of Henry III, with Magna Carta and Parliament becoming established features of an early English constitution.
Between times, assuming there are any, I will be working on the third (and final!) part of the trilogy of the Evolution of England, taking the story through a series of wars (notably with Scotland and France), contested kingships, plagues and peasants’ revolts, and the drama and gore of the Wars of the Roses. More anon.