The Norman Conquest

The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

By: Marc Morris

Narrated by: Frazer Douglas

A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: The Norman Conquest.

An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought.

This new history explains why the Norman Conquest was the most significant cultural and military episode in English history. Assessing the original evidence at every turn, Marc Morris goes beyond the familiar outline to explain why England was at once so powerful and yet so vulnerable to William the Conqueror’s attack; why the Normans, in some respects less sophisticated, possessed the military cutting edge; how William’s hopes of a united Anglo-Norman realm unraveled, dashed by English rebellions, Viking invasions, and the insatiable demands of his fellow conquerors.

This is a tale of powerful drama, repression, and seismic social change: the Battle of Hastings itself; the sudden introduction of castles and the massive rebuilding of every major church; the total destruction of an ancient ruling class. Language, law, architecture, and even attitudes toward life itself were altered forever by the coming of the Normans.

©2012 Marc Morris (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Key Event In English History

The Norman invasion is one of the pivotal moments in English history. However, beyond knowing the date 1066 and the "fact" that Harold died with a arrow to the eye, I did not know a whole lot about it. This book covers the event in pretty exhaustive detail. As another review has noted, the narrator does make listening to the book a little hard going. He has a strange rat-a-tat delivery and reads as if he is using an auto-cue. However, in mitigation, he has a very clear voice and delivery. I cannot speak for whether the material presented is controversial in any great way. The writer does lapse into the slightly irritating style of academic texts such as prefacing an obscure fact or complete conjecture with "Of course .." and using words like "ostensibly" and "arguably". Having said all that, I listened to the finish and felt somewhat more enlightened. I would recommend the book if you are interested in history in general and that period in particular. If not, I would not choose it as a starting point as its style is somewhere between an academic text and a popular history and it may not grab you.

Try this

Any additional comments?

Read this: The Battle of Hastings – The Fall of Anglo-Saxon England, By Harriet Harvey Wood. Still in print @ $8.66, Amazon

Quality but quiet

This was a great listen about the Norman conquest, brief enough to learn a lot while being in depth enough to make me feel like I was learning something. I just wish the speaker was a little louder, but that’s nothing headphones can’t fix!

Long and detailed

I really wanted to learn about the Norman invasion and this helped considerably. Even then, there was sometimes too much detail, causing my mind to wonder off. I still found it to be a worthwhile listen, but I played much of it at 1.5x owing to the slow, somewhat monotonous narration.

Accurate and extremely well written

Very well written book. There is a care for communicating the source of the historic data, still the narration is captivating and keeps you fascinated. The narrator has some minor peculiarities but he is very clear, and once you get used to his fragmentation of the sentences all is enjoyable and fine.