Æthelred: The Unready

by Levi Roach

Overview

An imaginative reassessment of Æthelred "the Unready," one of medieval England’s most maligned kings and a major Anglo-Saxon figure

The Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred "the Unready" (978–1016) has

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300225204
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Levi Roach is lecturer at the University of Exeter, and formerly a junior research fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge. He lives in Exeter, UK.

Editorial Reviews

"This detailed yet readable history does allow us to re-evaluate a misunderstood figure whose long reign occupied a nightmare of our island story… Levi Roach has written a well-considered, academically rigorous account of a fascinating, brutal and often neglected period in English history."—David Miles, Minerva

Minerva - David Miles

"This was an extraordinary period of English history, and there is a widening gap between academic writing about it and the general reader. Levi Roach has written a book that at least tries to bridge the gap… he is very good at extracting from the dry bones of charters, witness lists, land grants and coinage types, a compelling and impressive picture of what was going on at the court of Aethelred."—David Crane, Spectator
 

Spectator - David Crane

WINNER OF THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY PRIZE 2017

History Today - Longman History Today Prize

WINNER OF THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY PRIZE 2017

"Research across an exceptionally wide range of early medieval European lands, and historiographies in many languages, underpin Levi Roach’s fresh account of the life and reign of Æthelred II. With a keen comparative appreciation of contemporary European societies and states, Roach assesses Æthelred’s many dimensions in balanced judgements. He extracts new and timely understandings from texts familiar to historians, and also from archaeology, legal studies, liturgiology and ritual, and, often bringing all these together interdisciplinarily, numismatics. The effect is to alert readers both to the deep political and social structures of Æthelred’s reign and to the experiential rhythms of his long life. This is a book for experts and students alike."—Jinty Nelson, professor emeritus, King’s College London

"To what extent should rulers respect the wishes of those they rule? How is power to be tempered with prudence?  Should states seek accommodation with terrorists? Is England part of Europe, or should it detach itself from wider European trends? These tenth-century dilemnas faced by King Aethelred II remain surprisingly topical, a thousand years later. In exploring them, Levi Roach offers new insights into one of the darker yet most fascinating epochs in English history. His is a masterly account: a scholarly adventure story here for the first time set out in true context and vibrant detail."—Nicholas Vincent, author of Magna Carta

From the Publisher

"Roach’s task in rehabilitating a king whose reign ended in foreign conquest is trickier, but he successfully steers us to a real appreciation of how faith, martial prowess, a sometimes impulsive personality and the huge challenges of the Viking invasions interacted to place almost impossible constraints on Aethelred… welcome additions to the corpus of works on an unjustifiably neglected era of English history."—Philip Parker, Literary Review

Literary Review - Philip Parker