Lost Realms

'A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages … [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics

From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.

This is the world of Arthur and Urien; of the Picts and Britons and Saxon migration; of magic and war, myth and miracle.

In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of Britain’s ancient kingdoms: lands that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with gods and miracles, with giants and battles and ruin. Why did some realms – like Wessex, Northumbria, and Gwynedd – prosper while others fell? And how did their communities adapt to the catastrophic changes of their age?

Drawing on Britain’s ancient landscape and bringing together new archaeological revelations with the few precious fragments of surviving written sources, Williams spectacularly rebuilds a lost past.