Lost Realms: Histories of Britain From the Romans to the Vikings

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.