I often founder on histories of the Dark Ages, given the obstacles presented by the sketchy documentation and the unfamiliar political structure (such as it was). This book manoeuvered through some of these problems with a measure of success. The author does an extraordinary job of setting out how many and how reliable the sources which he has for any given topic are, and invites the reader to speculate along with him as he tries to cut through the murk to what was actually going on in a given moment. When he's operating chronologically for most of the first half of the book, he always uses his chapter title to tell you which years you're going to be reading about and a little headline about his main theme therein. Withal, we still end up with the usual medieval snoozers such as the royal treasury and, in this case, an anticlimactic final chapter about the century-long, off-and-on campaign to make Edward a saint. The favorite question of most--why isn't he Edward I, goes unanswered, indeed unaddressed. The vast supporting cast could have been better introduced; indeed, I wouldn't have minded a bit had he relaxed the historiographical rule that each character is to be introduced once and once only. Yes, the book has a good index and thus inheres a facility for flipping back to first mention of each actor, but I was already spending too much time writing down words to look up and couldn't get too interested in further distraction. And I've never read a medieval history which wouldn't be improved with a glossary, and I still haven't. In balance, this struck me as superb history, readability fair-to-partly cloudy. ( )

An extremely well researched book, the standard work on this Anglo-Saxon king, surely definitive until and unless a major new primary source is unearthed. But it is very readable and not dry for the most part - slightly more esoteric or specialist material is saved for footnotes (at the bottom of pages where they should be) and some appendices. This is a lovely edition, with pictures, maps, genealogical tables and chronologies. Great stuff. ( )