Summary of Max Adams' The First Kingdom

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The past is a collection of fragments that cannot be pieced together to form a coherent sequence. But through the accumulation of these fragments, it is now possible to furnish the set on which the lost drama was performed. #2 The First Kingdom is a chronicle of how Anglo-Saxon kings were chosen by God to bring about a single, universal church and people. It is difficult to tear one’s eyes away from a drama whose beginning is lost in obscurity, but whose dénouement was recorded by a towering intellect in the Early Medieval world, the Venerable Bede. #3 The village of Imber, which means Imma’s pond, is a reminder of the British army’s land in the chalk downs of Salisbury Plain. Other abandoned villages can be found in Wiltshire, such as Knook Down, which was inhabited long before Imber. #4 The Roman countryside of Britain is littered with the remains of villas, which were the stately homes of retired army officers, absentee Gaulish civil servants, and the stewards and bailiffs of distant emperors. But archaeological research has shown that these were quite atypical of Roman Britain’s housing stock.