The Mercian chronicles

The 8th century has long been a neglected backwater in British history: a shadowland between the death of Bede and the triumphs of {lfred, which saw the rise of Wessex as the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom and the eventual unification of England. But before the hegemony of Wessex, the kingdom of Mercia was the dynamic heart of a kingship that discovered the means to exercise central political authority for the first time since the Roman empire. In 'The Mercian Chronicles', Max Adams reconnects the worlds of Oswald, Bede and {lfred in an absorbing study of the landscape, politics and society of a fascinating century of change.