Lost Realms
This is the world of Arthur and Urien; of the Picts and Britons and Saxon migration; of magic and war, myth and miracle.
In Lost Realms Thomas Williams uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of Britain’s ancient kingdoms: lands that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with gods and miracles, with giants and battles and ruin. Why did some realms – like Wessex, Northumbria and Gwynedd – prosper while others fell? And how did their communities adapt to the catastrophic changes of their age? Drawing on Britain ’ s ancient landscape and bringing together new archaeological revelations with the few precious fragments of surviving written sources, Williams spectacularly rebuilds a lost past.
Thomas Williams is author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Viking Britain. He was a curator of the major international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend in 2014 and is now Curator of Early Medieval Coins at the British Museum. He undertook doctoral research at University College London and has taught and lectured in history and archaeology at the University of Cambridge.