What's New

Recent updates on my website.

Chronology of the Kings of Gwynedd in the seventh century

Surviving genealogies list the descent of the medieval Kings of Gwynedd from their early medieval predecessors. What do we know about the seventh-century Kings of Gwynedd, and how well do the genealogies fit with other surviving sources?

The Lords of the North, by Bernard Cornwell (Book review)

Swashbuckling military adventure in the Sharpe mould, as Uhtred of Bebbanburgh returns to his native Northumbria to pursue a blood-feud against the murderer of his foster-father. Third in the Uhtred series, set against the background of the wars between Alfred the Great and the Danes in ninth-century England.

Sunrise in the West, by Edith Pargeter (Book review)

First in a thoughtful and evocative quartet of novels telling the powerful story of Llewellyn ap Griffith, last prince of independent Wales.

New reader reports on Paths of Exile

New reader reports on Paths of Exile added

The female royal line: matrilineal succession amongst the Picts

Did the Picts, uniquely in early medieval Britain, select their kings according to the female line of descent rather than the male?

An Involuntary King, by Nan Hawthorne (Book review)

Set in a fictional kingdom in eighth-century England, An Involuntary King grew out of the letters and stories exchanged between the author and her pen-friend when both were teenagers. Young Lawrence unexpectedly, and rather reluctantly, finds himself King of Crislicland after the tragic deaths of his father and elder brother. As he struggles with his enemies and his own self-doubt to prove himself a worthy king, his most loyal supporter is his beautiful queen Josephine. But soon their kingdom is threatened by the treachery of an evil cousin, and their happiness by a darkly handsome Breton mercenary knight, who has fallen in love with Josephine and desires nothing more than to make her his wife.