Conquered

The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England

By: Eleanor Parker

Narrated by: Kristin Atherton

Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

The Battle of Hastings and its aftermath nearly wiped out the leading families of Anglo-Saxon England—so what happened to the children this conflict left behind?

Conquered offers a fresh take on the Norman Conquest by exploring the lives of those children, who found themselves uprooted by the dramatic events of 1066. Among them were the children of Harold Godwineson and his brothers, survivors of a family shattered by violence who were led by their courageous grandmother Gytha to start again elsewhere. Then there were the last remaining heirs of the Anglo-Saxon royal line—Edgar Ætheling, Margaret, and Christina—who sought refuge in Scotland, where Margaret became a beloved queen and saint. Other survivors, such as Waltheof of Northumbria and Fenland hero Hereward, became legendary for rebelling against the Norman conquerors. And then there were some, like Eadmer of Canterbury, who chose to influence history by recording their own memories of the pre-conquest world.

From sagas and saints’ lives to chronicles and romances, Parker draws on a wide range of medieval sources to tell the stories of these young men and women and highlight the role they played in developing a new Anglo-Norman society. These tales—some reinterpreted and retold over the centuries, others carelessly forgotten over time—are ones of endurance, adaptation and vulnerability, and they all reveal a generation of young people who bravely navigated a changing world and shaped the country England was to become.

©2022 Eleanor Parker (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

"Conquered is beautifully produced and written with flair and great scholarly acumen. Parker teaches medieval English literature at the University of Oxford and she dedicates her book to her students. Because of the pandemic these young people, she points out, like the young people in her book, have had to cope with upheaval, loss and a sudden change in the expected course of their lives. They have faced it with courage and determination, but, she writes, 'it is no doubt an experience that will remain with them'." (John Carey)

"In her superbly adroit new history, Eleanor Parker examines how memories of Edgar and his like—the generation that straddled the Conquest—survived, or were melded to meet the needs of the time.... It is much to the credit of Parker’s sensitivity as a scholar that, almost 1,000 years later, she has been able to resurrect, often from silence, the pathos of those decades and the plight of those who endured them." (Alex Burghart)

"This outstanding, beautifully written history follows the young Anglo-Saxons whose lives were shattered by the Norman conquest." (Andrew Holgate and Robbie Millen)