Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks

This excellent collection comprises essays from many of the foremost current scholars of Anglo-Saxon England. Like Nicholas Brooks's own works they focus on politics, charter scholarship, and the construction of historical memory, and range across the whole period between the fifth and twelfth centuries. An insightful and imaginative piece by Yorke reconstructs on the origin-legends likely to have been formulated in the unrecorded pagan period. There is a certain emphasis on tenth-century politics, including major contributions on AEthelflaed (Stafford), AEthelstan (Nelson and Foot) and Dunstan (Cubitt). Campbell's historiographical essay on E.W. Robertson, a Victorian scholar who is almost never read but who anticipated all the best ideas of the Anglo-Saxonists who have never read him, is a revelation. This is exciting and original scholarship of the highest quality. John Blair, The Queen's College Oxford, UK This volume offers an affectionate tribute to a well-loved scholar from distinguished friends, colleagues and former students. The breadth of its scope reflects the exceptional disciplinary range of its honorand. Students and teachers of Anglo-Saxon history will find material here to entertain, inform, and challenge them. Dr Julia Crick, The University of Exeter, UK This volume brings together a number of essays written by leading scholars in the field of early medieval English history. Focusing on three specific themes, myths, charters and warfare, each contribution presents a balance of both sources and interpretations. Furthermore they also link up with each other, since warfare was the predominant theme in Anglo-Saxon myth, while charters are an important source for military organisation and can also, for example through the information they supply on place names, shed light on belief and cult. Several of the contributions take a wider perspective, looking at later interpretations of the Anglo-Saxon past, both in the Anglo-Norman and more modern periods. In all, the volume makes a significant addition to the study of Anglo-Saxon England, showing how seemingly unrelated topics can be used to shed light on other areas. Contents: Introduction: myth, rulership, church and charters in the work of Nicholas Brooks, Julia Barrow; Nicholas Brooks at Birmingham, Christopher Dyer; Anglo-Saxon origin legends, Barbara Yorke; A nearly, but wrongly, forgotten historian of the Dark Ages, James Campbell; Anglo-Saxon charters: lost and found, Simon Keynes; Reculver Minster and its early charters, Susan Kelly; Stour in Ismere, Margaret Gelling; Was there an agricultural revolution in Anglo-Saxon England?, Alex Burghart and Andrew Wareham; The Annals of Æthelflæd: annals, history and politics in early 10th-century England, Pauline Stafford; The first use of the 2nd Anglo-Saxon Ordo, Janet L. Nelson; Where English becomes British: rethinking contexts for Brunanburh, Sarah Foot; Archbishop Dunstan: a prophet in politics?, Catherine Cubitt; A mass for St Birinus in an Anglo-Saxon missal from the Scandinavian mission-field, Alicia Corrêa; The Saint Clement dedications at Clementhorpe and Pontefract castle: Anglo-Scandinavian or Norman?, Barbara E. Crawford; England and the Norman myth, Nick Webber; What happened to ecclesiastical charters in England 1066-c1100?, Julia Barrow; Nicholas Brooks: a list of publications; General Index. About the Author: Julia Barrow is Reader in the School of History, University of Nottingham, UK. Andrew Wareham is Director of the British Academy Hearth Tax Project at Roehampton University, UK.