Levi Roach

An imaginative reassessment of Æthelred, one of medieval England’s most maligned kings and a major Anglo-Saxon figure. The Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred "the Unready" (978–1016) has long been considered to be inscrutable, irrational, and poorly advised. Infamous for his domestic and international failures, Æthelred was unable to fend off successive Viking raids, leading to the notorious St. Brice’s Day Massacre in...

Powerful The Economist Fascinating, panoramic . . . Roach brings an expert eye and page-turning energy – Helen Castor, bestselling author of She Wolves Narrated with pace, clarity, authority and style, Roach's book is a bracing tour of the world that the Normans made their own – Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain A fresh retelling . . ....

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signalled major shifts in society...