Thinking and talking about Anglo-Norman fact and fiction, finding perspectives on the past through writing and reading about it, engaging imaginatively with long-ago people and ways of life – these are the things I love to do and want to share on this website.
Living in Colchester, a town which lays claim to the largest Norman keep ever built in Britain, with impressive Norman ruins all around, inspired me with a desire to write about the Norman past, exploring a world that is both lost to us and yet lives on in our castles, churches, law, language and the stories we tell ourselves.
On this website you’ll find four novels that have an Anglo-Norman theme. The first, Aefled and Eleanor, begins a few years after the Norman Conquest and tells the story of a young English girl whose village is occupied by an invading force which will never be dislodged. Invasion becomes conquest in the most absolute form, the form of permanent change. How the villagers adapt, how Aefled herself survives in times of unprecedented violence and hardship, is the major theme of the novel.
The Domesday Murders, set in 1085 – 1086, follows events around the Great Survey of William the Conqueror, known as the Domesday Book. Surveyors come to the village and are mysteriously killed. But are they really who they say they are? Who killed them and why? This novel continues the story of Aefled as her life suddenly changes direction, offering new and unexpected possibilities – if she keeps her nerve.
In the third novel, The Remarkable Tale of the Bull and the Sheep, the focus shifts towards national events as Aefled’s life is transformed by a friendship which is going to open up a whole world of opportunity. In this story new characters are revealed and the shift of focus enables the introduction of historical figures. These non-fictional characters are actually people about whom we have a remarkable amount of documentary material. So the story takes off from historical events and follows the shaping of court life among the new ruling class in England. In addition, it tells the extraordinary tale of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, a mild man who longs to remain a monk but is appointed against his will to an office he doesn’t want and for which he feels himself unsuited. And yet, after a faltering start, the venerable old scholar goes on to develop into a strong defender of the church. For years he battles against the grasping policies of King William Rufus. Indeed William and Anselm were so contentious, so ill-matched, so unable to form a working partnership, that they were likened at the time to a BULL and a SHEEP that had been yoked together at the same plough. Inevitably they drew chaos in their wake.
The fourth novel is called After the Arrow. The arrow in question is the one that killed King William Rufus in August 1100 while he was out hunting in the forest of Brockenhurst. This arrow sets in motion a chain of events that brings about the seizure of the throne in a political coup. While concerned with these national events, the novel also completes the story of Aefled and her family. Over the course of the four novels, Aefled’s journey has been a progress from ordinary village girl to chatelaine of a Norman Castle. Now we follow her to the heart of national life, the household of the Queen. Via a series of clever choices and lucky accidents – love, friendship, marriage, chance encounters – her own intelligence and ability to thrive throw her into the centre of national affairs. At the same time we follow the unfolding story of Anselm and his struggle to make a success of the role for which he knows himself to be unsuited. Threats of exile, then exile itself, years spent wandering around the continental courts seeking support, journeys to Rome to seek the help of the Pope, Anselm pays a high price for occupying an office he never wanted. It is while he is in exile that news comes of the sudden shocking death of King William Rufus. Now Anselm must find ways of working with another king, Henry 1st who, as it turns out, is rather less bullish and more open to negotiation than his brother had been.
These four novels are fictional stories based on fact.
The fifth book, however, is firmly based in historical reality. Deaths, Disasters and Destinies:Anglo-Norman History in Twelve Lives is the portrayal of an under-examined period of English history. In this book the focus is on the events in England and the continent between the years 1087 -1135, from the death of William the Conqueror to the death of his last remaining heir, Henry 1st. Between these two dates, a crucial stage of England’s development took place, a half century that is for convenience called the Anglo-Norman period.
The characters in this book are built up from surviving written accounts of chronicles and letters, as well as official documents from the royal archives and from the great ecclesiastical houses. Indeed there is a wealth of documentary material for this period which nevertheless is sometimes unreliable or contradictory. Chroniclers, for example, may dissent from one another or give different accounts at different times. Secondary historical sources are drawn on for further insights and the evaluation of source material.
Even deeper insights can be gained from investigating the many ways in which the lives of the characters in this volume were interconnected. The people we meet here knew one another, sometimes very intimately, sometimes vaguely or through third parties, sometimes over a long period, other times briefly. But they were contemporaries whose lives, to some extent at least, criss-crossed in a striking pattern of coincidences, chances, personal flaws, wrong choices, unfortunate twists and tragic endings. Although the characters are the heroes of their own tales, they are also part players in the stories of others, thus they can be viewed from various angles as the stories unfold and different aspects are revealed.