“... The notion​ that human history is determined at bottom by natural forces and non-human factors seems to be an idea whose time has come. In Prisoners of Geography (2015), Tim Marshall argued that the fate of nations depends on their rivers and mountains, frontiers and coastlines. In The Earth Transformed (2023), Peter Frankopan added climate to the list: drought in Central Asia caused the fall of empires in Europe, and the Little Ice Age did the same for the Ming dynasty in China ...”

“... again, 1951) and Julian Rathbone’s The Last English King (Harold again, 1997). Tom Licence uses the phrase in a more nuanced way. His subtitle points to the fact that while Harold Godwinson may have been ‘the last English king’ (actually he was half-Danish), and possibly the ‘last of the Saxon kings’ (though that is just ...”

“... to death in mines and quarries, but slavery wasn’t racialised and inescapable as it is in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Husbands commemorated slave-wives, and freed slaves did the same for their former masters. Everyone I’ve mentioned so far was a member of the upper class, or at least was related to or owned by someone who had special status. Is there any sign of ...”

“... Over​ the last forty years, academics have tried, without much success, to superimpose the idea of the Vikings as peaceful traders on the berserkers-and-horned-helmets tradition. There is little disagreement about the events of the Viking Age or its timeline, stretching from 8 June 793 (the unexpected raid on Lindisfarne) to 25 September 1066, when King Haraldr Harðráði, ‘Hard-Counsel Harald’, died at the Battle of Stamford Bridge ...”

“... Thow doted daffe, dulle are thi wittes,’ says Holy Church to the Dreamer in Piers Plowman: ‘To litel latin thou lernedest in thi youthe!’ The Dreamer doesn’t argue with her; in fact, he agrees, saying sadly: Heu michi quia sterilem duxi vitam iuvenilem. But her view is one of the great, long-lasting English fallacies, a fine example of post hoc propter hoc ...”

“... Of all nations’, writes Ian Ousby, ‘we’, the English, have ‘perhaps the most strongly defined sense of national identity – so developed and so stylised, in fact, that we are frequently conscious of it as a burden or restraint’. I wonder what he can possibly mean by that. The most anomalous thing about England in comparison with all other European nations (of course it isn’t a nation, but even in comparison with Scotland and Wales) is that it doesn’t have the formal marks of national identity acquired even by Iceland or Finland, Luxembourg or Albania ...”

“... Very good, Mr Hardy. Excellent poetry, especially in a time of the breaking of nations (1915). One of time’s universals. ‘War’s annals will cloud into night/Ere their story die.’ But what if you haven’t invented the harrow yet? Or indeed the collar for harnessing horses? The former is not seen till the Bayeux Tapestry; the date of the latter is much debated, but is definitely a Medieval, not an antique invention ...”

“... What? seyde Sir Launcelot, is he a theff and a knyght? And a ravyssher of women? He doth shame unto the Order of Knyghthode, and contrary unto his oth. Hit is pyté that he lyvyth!’ This indignant outburst by Sir Lancelot in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur has long been an embarrassment to admirers of the work and of its author. Ever since G ...”

“... As its title so obviously shows, the main thesis of Russell Miller’s book is that L. Ron Hubbard, inventor of Dianetics and founder of Scientology, was all his life an incorrigible liar. That being the case, it is a pity that the book starts off with a statement which sounds hypocritical at best. ‘I would like to be able to thank the officials of the Church of Scientology for their help in compiling this biography ...”

“... Star Trek is a phenomenon, no doubt about it. Since 1966 we’ve had the original series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine (now in its fourth year) and Voyager (now in its second). There were 263 hours available for viewing in 1994, with more appearing all the time, seven feature films, and over one hundred titles in the novelisation series, of which 35 have made it into the New York Times bestseller list ...”

“... The Anglo-Saxons had no libraries in the sense that we understand the word: rooms, or better still buildings, dedicated to the storage of books. St Aldhelm of Malmesbury wrote a Latin riddle with the title arca libraria, but what that means is, clearly, ‘book-box’. Very few Anglo-Saxons had access to enough books to warrant even a bookshelf. As Michael Lapidge tells us, they kept their ‘libraries’ in boxes, and when an Anglo-Saxon scholar ‘wished to consult a book, he got down on his hands and knees and rummaged round in the chest until he came upon the book he required ...”

“... It is not only the most familiar date in English history, it also marks in many minds, even educated ones, the start of it. Before 1066 there were just those tedious Anglo-Saxons, whose public image was all too memorably fixed by the minor characters in Ivanhoe: Athelstane, last survivor of the old Anglo-Saxon royal line (fat, bone-idle), its last partisan Cedric (hopelessly conservative, completely out of touch) and Gurth (just a swineherd ...”

“... When I first met Ronald Hutton, at a conference in Montana ten years ago, he remarked that if you looked at a modern book on druids, what you were likely to find was a number of chapters about ancient druids – about whom we know very little – followed by a perfunctory coda on modern druids, about whom we know a great deal. Wasn’t this, he asked, obviously the wrong way round? That looks like a rhetorical question with only one sensible answer, but there is a case to be made the other way, as Hutton indicated in Witches, Druids and King Arthur (2003 ...”

“... Robert Ferguson’s title has already been used at least twice for Viking-related works, which makes one wonder about his subtitle: what’s ‘new’ in Viking studies? The history of the Vikings has been well known, in outline, for a long time. By early medieval standards, we have very good documentation for it, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in Frankish and Irish annals, with further contributions from Arab and Byzantine sources, while the Icelanders’ passion for sagas and poems means that we also have versions of the Vikings’ side of the story ...”

“... Christopher Hill has shown literary critics the way before now. Many must have felt at least mildly chastened by his remarks in Milton and the English Revolution (1977), no less forceful for their studied moderation, on remembering the effects on Paradise Lost of censorship, fear, a social context in which men were hanged for expressing Miltonic opinions and judges expressed regret at not being able to order sentences of death by burning ...”