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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 ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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 ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
GLASGOW HERALD
'A brilliant little book, wellwritten, knowledgeable, insightful, accessible, a model of how popular social history should be written'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Readable, entertaining, informative, surprising and lively. This book is like no other I have read on pre-Conquest England. While most books deal rather dryly with thegns and eaoldermen and the coming of Christianity, this book focuses on what life would have been like for the ordinary man and woman of the time. It is full of illumnating anecdotes about such things as the various types of worm people might have in their guts and the process of minting a silver penny - and what happened to you if you were found to be forging them - not a happy fate. It offers insights into the life of the monk and nun - and tells you where their ink came from to copy their devotional texts. It gives a powerful impression of how life could be very rich, or almost unbearable in times of famine. It deals with diet, religious beliefs, work and labour, slavery and bondage, the legal system, women, the class system, the economy, medicine, paganism, town and country life, battle and war, and all this in a fresh and lively manner. The authors make liberal use of sources to illustrate their topic, to great effect. This text is not written by academics, but it is a very useful insight into the world of 'real' men and women. Highly recommended.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A really very readable account of everyday life around the turn of the first millenium AD (with the odd bit of political history thrown in here and there). You really don't need any background knowledge to enjoy this, and it's written from the point of view of human interest rather than with any dry academic aims. Very enjoyable.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio Cassette
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 across the various seas (an invasion trend that would stop less than 100 years after the turn of the millennium). The typical Englishman was well-fed, but the kinds of food might astound modern readers; when the people got indigestion back then, medical treatments were even more bizarre.
Into the world, Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger venture with humour and insight. Lacey and Danziger, established writers in related topics, have traced a journey through history by tracing the typical life during a year at the turn of the year 1000, through the Julius Work Calendar, on reserve at the British Library, lost for a time due to miscategorisation. The authors (Lacey and Danziger) makes use of this interesting framework of month-by-month chronicling to develop the details of daily life and work in England in the year 1000.
The different months take the paradigm for different topics -- February looks at geography; August looks at medicine (and the frequency of flies); November looks at the issues of gender relationships. Among the fascinating facts that come out in the analysis are the kinds of cyclical patterns that occur in history --Lacey and Danziger point out that under Canute, an unfaithful wife would meet with a horrible fate, but that legislation died with him, until the Commonwealth period several hundred years later, when it would be revived.
The authors do not stick exclusively to English shores -- they discuss the general world situation, as it would impact English development. Lacey and Danziger close the year and discussion with the figure of Gerbert, who would become pope Sylvester II, having been the scholar of note under the Ottos, successors of Charlemagne. His strange innovations, like prefering Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) to Roman numerals, introducing 'exotic' machines like an abacus to the world made him suspect -- however, Lacey and Danziger refer to him as the first millennium's Bill Gates, revolutionising computational power for good and forever.
Lacey and Danziger warn against the 'snobbery of chronology', as C.S. Lewis terms it -- we don't necessarily know better or live better than our ancestors, and sometimes our distorted views of the past much be called into check. For example, it is commonly held that people today are taller than people in the past; while this trend is true over the past several generations, prior to that, it is not true -- the average Englishman today is only slightly taller than the average Englishman of the year 1000.
From riddles and games for a dark and stormy night (playing cards would not be invented for several hundred years) to the origins of serfdom and family life, this is a fascinating text.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not dry and not dull - highly recommended.
I loved this little book, as it came out just before the year 2000, and was a good introduction to a thousand years ago. As ever, I have only read it now, but what a little gem! Read more
Published 3 months ago by Matt
A great history book!
This is an outstanding work of historical writing. I thought when I first opened this book that it was going to prove to be somewhat unreadable, as some academic histories... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Jordan
History brought to life
I am trying to write a timeslip novel so wanted to find books that described what life was really like for real people rather than the dry recounting of past times that so many... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. P. M. Harrison
The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger
This is an excellent and entertaining read, very much to be recommended. It did contain a great deal of information about life in England before the Norman Conquest, including a... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Burncastle
First class tale of the turn of the first millenium
Thought I'd celebrate the 10th anniversary of the millennium by reading this short volume that has been languishing on my shelves for a while. Read more
Published on 27 Feb 2010 by C. Young
Everyone should read this!
This is an amazing account of life in the year 1000 AD; it is very readable and packed with fascinating and surprising details. A real eye-opener. Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2010 by Mrs. M. Robbins
Lege Feliciter!
Indeed, 'May you read happily.'
A lovely little book that actually manages to transport you back in time. Read more
A lovely little book that actually manages to transport you back in time. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2007 by S. D. Hutt
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 31 Jan 2006 by Kurt Messick
A delightful and informative read.
If dull History books can be described as "dry", then "The Year 1000" should be described as "wet". However, I would choose "warm" or "charming" as more descriptive adjectives. Read more
Published on 31 Jan 2003 by Chris J. Newman
Shining a light on the dark ages
Monty Python have a lot to answer for. When it comes to life in the dark ages, their comic depiction of mud-splattered, sack-wearing, shrubbery-obsessed peasants has probably... Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2002 by J Gerrard
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