Hey there! Thanks for being a part of this Substack community. It’s been a fun first month together. I plan for this newsletter to be published roughly once every four weeks with a roundup of books, podcasts, and other things that I’ve enjoyed. I hope that it’s a more informal place to share than my other posts (stories, biographies, and book reviews). Please do continue the conversation in the comments with what you’ve been loving lately - always with kindness and always related to our vision here, uncovering the stories of medieval men and women.
Poetry
I have recently been taking a writing course here on Substack, with Jessica Rose Williams. The first session encouraged us to read poetry each time we sit down to write. In keeping with the vision here at Telling Their Tales, I’ve started with a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems: there’s no better way to get into the minds of medieval men and women than by hearing their words directly! I’ve been sharing some of my favourite lines on my notes page, starting with The Ruin. This is a poem that seeks to capture the decay and destruction that followed the end of Roman rule in Britain, describing (rather dramatically) the landscape of early Anglo-Saxon England. Here is a longer excerpt from the poem:
Marvellous is this masonry, though fate
Has ruined and destroyed the city buildings,
The works of giants crumble, and the roofs
Have fallen in, the towers have tumbled down,
The barred gate has been borne away as plunder,
Frost cracks the plaster, all the ceilings gape,
Collapsed and pieced with holes, consumed by age.
The ground holds in its grip, the hard embrace
Of earth, the dead departed master-builders.
A hundred generations have now passed.
Often this wall, red-stained and grey with lichen,
Has stood though storms, while kingdoms rose and fell;
But now the high curved wall has also fallen.
The Ruin. A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse, ed. Hamer, Richard. London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 2015.
Books
As a classic bookworm, I always have multiple books on the go at any one time, mostly related to Anglo-Saxon England but often drifting into the later medieval age. I’ve recently been reading:
What is History, Now? Suzannah Lipscomb and Helen Carr (eds.), 2021. This is a fab recent response to E.H. Carr’s classic What is History? that covers a wide range of historical styles in short essays by a variety of authors. Well worth a read if you’re interested in the discipline of History.
Heaven on Earth. Emma J. Wells, 2022. The focus of this book is a little later and a little more international than my usual reads, taking a tour of the cathedrals of later medieval Europe. I’m only one chapter in but so far I am enjoying the structure of this book, using cathedral building as the golden thread winding through the various tales.
Homecoming. Rosemary Goring, 2022. Very different to my usual read and focusing on a much later character: the story of Mary Queen of Scots while she was in Scotland. Much like Heaven on Earth, the story is structured around the locations Mary visited while she lived in Scotland, before her imprisonment. Highly recommend if you are also interested in later individuals.
Podcasts
Gone Medieval from History Hit recently did a series on medieval queens, looking into the lives of: Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians; Anne of Bohemia; Emma of Normandy; and Margaret of Anjou.
History Hit also did a recent episode entitled ‘Mysterious Anglo-Saxon Bone Chests with Cat Jarman’, delving into Jarman’s latest book, The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons. Keep an eye out for an in-depth review of this book soon!
I also really enjoyed the Career in Ruins episode with Cat Jarman back in January 2022 (‘A career with Vikings’). The story of how she got back into academic study as a mature student following the birth of her children felt very familiar to me and was deeply encouraging.
My final History Hit recommendation (it’s a favourite!) is their episode ‘How the North Turned Christian’ with Florence H.R. Scott of Ælfgif-who? here on Substack.
Recent Posts
In case you missed them, here are links to the most recent posts here on Telling Their Tales.
Recent Reads
These reviews will usually be focused on one book, with an in-depth look at the content and overall style. This first review post, however, is a bumper one, with five mini-reviews to get the series started.
Who was Æthelberht of Kent?
‘Æthelberht, king of Kent, was a very powerful monarch. The lands over which he exercised his suzerainty stretched as far north as the great river Humber, which divides the northern from the southern Angles.’ (Bede HE: I.25) It would be fair to say that Æthelberht of Kent was a powerful ‘English’ king (in inverted commas because the concept of ‘Englishne…
That’s it for this month’s newsletter. Remember to comment below with your latest history loves!
H