The Anglo-Saxons: The Verdict of History

In the last of his trilogy on the Anglo-Saxons, Paul Hill explores their legacy, as interpreted over the last millennium. Not long after the Norman invasion, William of Malmesbury was seeing it as an unmitigated disaster, while Geoffrey of Monmouth cast the Anglo-Saxons as cruel invaders and resurrected the old Arthurian myths. Later, Elizabethan historians saved Anglo-Saxon manuscripts for posterity and the English Civil War saw the overtly political use of a sense of Anglo-Saxonism, while in Victorian times Anglo-Saxon personal names became fashionable. In conclusion, the author asks whether the Anglo-Saxons have any meaning in modern multi-cultural England.