The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England, by Marc Morris (Hutchinson; 528 pp., $100.00). England is one of the oldest nations in the world, and tales of its foundation have been told since at least 731 AD, when the Venerable Bede completed his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The Northumbrian monk described the indigenous Britons being gradually superseded from 449 onwards by three tribes from across the North Sea: the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Although the word “English” does not appear until 855, more than a hundred years earlier, the tribes were starting to think of themselves as a nation unified by experience, propinquity, religion, and what a later Saxon, St. Boniface, would call “blood and bone.”
Ever since, some Englishmen have seen themselves as Anglo-Saxon scions—brave, freeborn, vigorously superior to all others, from the sixth-century Welsh to 20th century imperial subjects. Yet frustratingly little is known about these patriotically pivotal people, and much of what we do know is retrospective romancing. Marc Morris, previously noted for histories of the Norman Conquest and the Plantagenet kings, now strives to make sense of these Old World founding fathers and to show them in European context, amongst a bewilderment of Æthelbalds and Æthelflæds and still-resonant battles, the sites of which were long ago lost to view.
The Anglo-Saxon period lasted 700 years, from adventus Saxonum to the death of Harold at Hastings, so generalizations of the period are frequently fatuous. Bede and the later Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were often vague and sometimes mistaken, but in the dearth of other records, subsequent narratives have leaned heavily on both and often added errors of their own. Morris strives to reconcile these with archaeological insights—including such treasures as the Sutton Hoo helmet, with its challengingly empty eye-sockets—folk traditions, administrative trace elements (bishoprics, courts, shires), and toponymy.
He revivifies overlooked figures like St. Dunstan and St. Wilfrid, to resume their rightful place alongside more obvious avatars such as Alcuin, Alfred, Edmund, and Offa. He navigates carefully and readably out of the “Dark Ages” toward the Norman nighttime by way of complex wars; Christianization; Romanization; attacks by, and then absorption of, Vikings; Alfred’s resurrection of English fortunes; and the treacherous, troubled, “unready” twilights of Æthelred—highlighted with occasional color, such as that King Eadred had the habit of masticating his food and then spitting it back out onto his plate, disgusting fellow diners.
England, Morris reminds us, is still a work in progress. If he deflates many myths, in the end, the author is affectionate and admiring of a people out of whose obscure origins arose an epic legacy.
(Derek Turner)
Wrath: America Enraged, by Peter W. Wood (Encounter Books; 256 pp., $28.99). Americans have not historically been an “angry” people, observes Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars; and Washington, Madison, Lincoln, and other American leaders have tended to be figures of moderation and good sense. Yet, more recently, leftist progressive elites have drawn from ideas tracing back to Freud and other European intellectuals to crank up a “sadistic delight” in tormenting ordinary Americans. The new anger, self-regarding and self-promoting, is a form of cultural and political performance art, an obnoxious grandstanding that naturally enrages the other side.
The new elites are building on this “authenticity through anger” as a means of purifying the country through destruction of historical tradition. Their open intolerance of the views of others is elevated into a kind of modern wrath, as practiced by the Clintons and younger members of the extremist left wing of today’s Democratic Party.
Wood masterfully demonstrates how the new wrath equates basic common sense with cowardice and promotes the transition from a society that values self-control and moderation into one that celebrates over-the-top displays of rage and abuse as a new civil right. Feminists encourage modern women to see the advantages of “righteous” anger. Black elites on the make encourage ordinary black citizens to see the country as irredeemable, forever stained by its early history of organized slavery.
Wood also observes that this new wrath has infected many areas of our culture, including our educational system and our election policy, as well as corporate America. The posturing has produced added layers of diversity monitors and hectoring race-baiters like Ibram X. Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Given the subject, in other hands this could have been a grim and depressing read, but with Wood’s brisk—even breezy—style and his deft, often humorous, use of historical references, he has produced a thought-provoking, readable book. One that takes on the wrangling between today’s elites and the everyday Americans they scorn, which goes to illustrate the imperative of a conservative victory.
(Tony Outhwaite)
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