- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown; Christmas ed edition (28 Jan 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0316643750
- ISBN-13: 978-0316643757
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 313,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Although daily dangers were many, housing uncomfortable, and the dominant smells unpleasant indeed ("August was the month when flies started to become a problem, buzzing round the dung heaps in the corner of every farmyard and hovering over the open cesspits of human refuse that were located outside every house", write journalists Lacey and Danziger) life in England at the turn of the first millennium was not at all bad. "If you were to meet an Englishman in the year 1000," they write, "the first thing that would strike you would be how tall he was--very much the size of anyone alive today."
The Anglo-Saxons were not only tall, they go on to say, but also generally well fed and healthy; more so than many Britons only a few generations ago. Writing in a breezy, often humorous style, Lacey and Danziger draw on the medieval Julius Work Calendar, a document detailing everyday life around A.D. 1000, to reconstruct the spirit and reality of the era. Light though their touch is, they've done their homework, and they take the reader on a well-documented and enjoyable month-by-month tour through a single year, touching on such matters as religious belief, superstition, medicine, cuisine, agriculture and politics, as well as contemporary ideas of the self and society. Readers should find the authors' discussions of famine and plague a refreshing break from present-day millennial worries, and a very stimulating introduction to medieval English history. --Gregory McNamee
Review
Thoroughly enjoyable ... a superb insight into life as it was lived a thousand years ago (INDEPENDENT )
A brilliant little book, well-written, knowledgeable, insightful, accessible, a model of how popular social history should be written (GLASGOW HERALD )
A series of deftly-turned vignettes of what it was like to live in England at the turn of the last millennium ... a quirky and engaging book (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
A beautiful window on past history. My book of the year (Simon Schama )
A brilliant little book, well-written, knowledgeable, insightful, accessible, a model of how popular social history should be written (GLASGOW HERALD )
A series of deftly-turned vignettes of what it was like to live in England at the turn of the last millennium ... a quirky and engaging book (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
A beautiful window on past history. My book of the year (Simon Schama )
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Before I start I suppose this book is quite a good read for the layperson. However, for someone who knows a bit about history reading this book will send you into cringe fits, snorts of indignation and embarrassed laughter. For this reason this isn't a good book to read on public transport. The authors seem to have consulted quite a few academics in the course of their research, but this doesn't seem to come across while reading it. As other reviewers have pointed out, the reliance on a single source is lamentable, and the portrayl of ethnic groups is just as bad. For example the Vikings are written off as rapacious neanderthals, the Normans as dastardly Frenchmen, plus the reader is subjected to Daily Mail esque musings on "The English spirit". One look at the author's previous works, "Southebys, bidding for class" and a hagiography of the Queen Mother demonstrates how far they were out of their depth to even consider writing this cartoon version of history. In fact, it's up there with Gonscinny and Uderzo joking that the Britons were defeated by the Romans because they stopped fighting at weekends - It's worse than that, Lacey and Danziger actually believe what they're saying! That said, it does look very nice on my bookshelf and if anyone asks I can just casually slate it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is light on good old fashioned scholastic learning but big on readability! If you are looking for a brief glimpse at what life was like in the year 1000 then this book is for you, don't expect any deep insight however because this book is aimed strictly at the general reader. This book gives the reader a taste of anglo-saxon life and should interest the reader in finding out more of the history of our English nation because there is more to the anglo-saxons than 1066 and 'William the lucky Bastard'
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
There is definitely a book out there which needs to be written on this subject but this is just not it. I really feel that I wasted my money having bought this and would instead recommend the book, "Plague, Pox and Pestilence" by Kenneth F. Kiple (Editor), which isn't as depressing as it sounds and has a lot more worthwhile information than this badly researched chaff.
The splitting into twelve months just smacks of Monty Python saying the sermon on the mount happened around tea time. The over use of a single source is terrible and the pigeon-holing of the Normans and especially the Vikings is deplorable (not quite as far as saying they all have horned helmets but not far off). The writers have just accepted political bias as fact which ruins any book of this type.
Don't buy this. It's a waste of money and a corruption of many of the facts.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
He remains an Englishman...
The turn of the millennium (the last millennium, that is) in England was an interesting world to behold -- the country was struggling toward unity, but still wary of invaders from... Read more
Published on 21 Mar 2006 by Kurt Messick
Lightweight, enjoyable read.
Having read some other reviews has compounded a fear I had as I read this book.
I'm no historian (especially of medieval times), but I wondered throughout "How do they know... Read more
Published on 22 April 2000 by M. Saxby
... light and easy read ...
Again I very rarely read a book in 1 day but thoroughly enjoyed reading this and could not put it down until I'd finished it. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2000
Obviously not written by medieval historians
This book is what happens when you have people write about a subject they do not know a thing about. Read more
Published on 5 Jan 2000
Life before 1066. Very interesting and easy to read.
I found this book to be thoroughly enjoyable. If, like me, history holds no ingrained fascination to yourself then this book is ideal. Its subject and style draw the reader on. Read more
Published on 21 Nov 1999 by Dr. Luke Bennetto
Light and easy-to-read, but it fills a real gap
This is the first book that I've read in just one day for many years. Yes, much of it is superficial, and '1000' is treated with a few hundred years of salt, but its a period that... Read more
Published on 21 Nov 1999 by rodericp@parker-bell.demon.co.uk
This book is a piece of populist journalism with zero depth
A typical piece of populist journalism for the millenially challenged, this book trots out some pedestrian desk research along with a good dose of 'man in the street' patronage. Read more
Published on 18 Aug 1999
Puts Year 2000 into perspective
This book is very easy to read but has a lot of very interesting details about life in Britain at the turn of the first millenium. Read more
Published on 16 Aug 1999
It's not all William and Harold......
Everyone knows what happened in 1066. The Normans came over, won the Battle of Hastings and in the process kicked off British history proper - right ? Wrong. Read more
Published on 18 Jun 1999
An interesting book on an adapt subject
I found this book very interesting and easy to read. Although there isn't great depth this means that the book doesn't get at all bogged down, and we still learn about some really... Read more
Published on 20 May 1999
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
