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Lost Realms
- Histories of Britain from the Romans to the Vikings
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
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Lost Realms
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Summary
As Tolkien knew, Britain in the ‘Dark Ages’ was a mosaic of little kingdoms. Many of them fell by the wayside. Some vanished without a trace. Others have stories that can be told.
ELMET. HWICCE. LINDSEY. DUMNONIA. ESSEX. RHEGED. POWYS. SUSSEX. FORTRIU.
In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain, uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of nine kingdoms that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with saints and gods and miracles, with giants and battles and the ruin of cities. Why did some realms – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – prosper while these nine fell?
From the Scottish Highlands to the Cornish coastline, from the Welsh borders to the Thames Estuary, Williams brings together new archaeological revelations with the few precious fragments of written sources to have survived to rebuild a lost world; a world where the halls of farmer-lords survive as ghost-marks in the soil, where the vestiges of hill-forts cling to rocky outcrops and grave-fields and barrow-mounds shelter the bodies of the ancient dead. This is the world of Arthur and Urien, Bede and Taliesin; of the Picts and Britons and Saxon migration; of magic and war, myth and miracle.
In riveting detail, Williams uses Britain’s ancient landscape to resurrect a lost past where lives were lived with as much vigour and joy as in any other age, where people fought and loved and toiled and suffered grief and disappointment just as cutting as our own. In restoring some of these voices, he raises questions matching many we face today: how do nations form and why do some fail? How do communities adapt to catastrophe, and how do people insulate themselves from change? How do we construct the past, and why do we – like the people of early medieval Britain – revere it, often finding in the tales of those long-gone a curious sense of belonging?
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Critic reviews
PRAISE FOR LOST REALMS
‘Sceptical, scrupulous, written with wit and flair’Financial Times
‘This brilliant history of Dark Age Britain mixes serious scholarship with nods to pop culture, from Tolkien to The Wicker Man… Lost Realms is a joy to read’The Telegraph, FIVE STAR REVIEW
‘Williams makes a compelling guide as he steers us through the darkness’ Spectator
‘Williams has a fine command of the literary, administrative, religious and archaeological sources of early medieval Britain. He is a diligent scholar and a likeable writer’ Sunday Times
‘Thomas Williams is an exceptionally vivid and exciting writer, and his wonderfully evocative recreations are just what the generally impoverished and bewildering evidence for early medieval Britain requires. He is also however a meticulous, honest and fair-minded scholar, and his careful analysis of that evidence, material and textual, always establishes its limitations as well as its potential. His consideration of the losers of Anglo-Saxon state building provides a genuinely original and illuminating perspective on how England came to be’
Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch
'Thomas Williams has blended a potent brew of mythic and material fragments to raise forgotten kings & queens (and their stories) from the grave. An historian not afraid of the dark and with eyes adapted to it – what he sees is assessed sagely and described beautifully'
Christopher Hadley, author of Hollow Places
What listeners say about Lost Realms
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 03-11-23
Intriguing
Well worth listening to the intriguing stories of these lost realms. They are well researched and evocatively told.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Neil Dix-Pincott
- 15-01-23
Magnificent retelling of Britain’s post-Roman journey
Fantastically well written, full of compelling storytelling and humour; all brilliantly delivered by a narrator who lifts Thomas Williams’ superb writing on the Dark Ages into the light.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- hayley r.
- 02-10-23
interesting facts about lost kingdoms however
Painfully slow and repeatitive ,a 6 hour book at most, unfortunately stretched to 12
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- moonraker
- 30-11-22
Slightly suspect and already outdated.
Very disappointing book. No mention of DNA, at all which is quite incredible since it has revolutionized the study of settlement of the UK. Another DNA study about the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons has just been released this year which has once again confirmed there was large scale migration from northern Germany, The Netherlands, and southern Scandinavia around 400AD, which makes this book look rather dated already.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Kizzia Mildmay
- 31-03-23
An enlightening look at the dark ages
A well written and cleverly structured look at the history of the British Isles during what is often referred to as the Dark Ages; the book focuses on nine of the smaller kingdoms present within that time frame, charting their individual histories from origin to demise.
Thomas Williams, to his credit, takes great care to make clear when he is making conjecture from the sources he used and so there are a lot of possiblys and probablys throughout. This is absolutely not a bad thing in any way but it bears acknowledging since you are not coming away with a definitive history of Elmet, Hwicce, Lindsey, Dumnonia, Essex, Rheged, Powys, Sussex and Fortriu. Instead you are being given a plausible story for each of them given the information available through archeological finds and the texts we have (Bede being the ever present star of that show).
This is a part of history I am very interested in, and so have at least a passing familiarity with much of what was discussed, yet I at no point felt like I was retreading old ground. It was well researched, well balanced, very accessible and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, even if I did occasionally mix up some of the people with the more similar sounding names in my head.
I found Matt Addison's narration to be excellent.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mark
- 05-03-23
What can happen when civilisation hits the buffers
“Dark ages” illuminated as far as current knowledge allows. But it’s hard to know anything when the written record is too often serving a later agenda. Some good reminders of how far archaeology has advanced and of its limits.
Well written, if occasionally florid.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- JEA008
- 25-02-23
Disappointing.
Was expecting more. Author is trying too hard.. I found it tiring to listen to. Gave-up 2 chapters in.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- DRMM
- 11-09-23
Can’t help but be political
Sadly the opening sections were laden with political comparisons instead of just telling the story.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- James Wakefield
- 07-10-22
Nothing new
This books is almost sold under false pretenses. The author reveals absolutely nothing new and much of the material is padding. I disliked it intensely.
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2 people found this helpful