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The First Kingdom

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The First Kingdom

By: Max Adams
Narrated by: Kris Dyer
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About this listen

The best-selling author of The King in the North turns his attention to the obscure era of British history known as 'the age of Arthur'.

Somewhere in the dim void between the departure from Britain of the Roman legions at the start of the fifth century and the days of the venerable Bede, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what?

Max Adams scrutinises the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chronicles, stripping away the most lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesising the research of the last 40 years to tease out strands of reality from myth.

His central theme evolves from an apparently simple question: how, after the end of the Roman state, were people taxed? Rejecting ethnic and nationalist explanations for the emergence of the Early Medieval kingdoms, Adams shows how careful use of a wide range of perspectives, from anthropology to geography, can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.

©2021 Max Adams (P)2021 W F Howes Great Britain Royalty Imperialism King

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Profile Image for James Donaldson

Mediocre

The narration needs to be listened to at 1.4 or even 1.5 speed to sound close to normal. The story itself is a bit high brow and sparse on detail and examples, at least in the first chapters. A real struggle to get through.

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