The book reviewed on this page is available at amazon.com. After reading the review, you can purchase the book by clicking on the "Buy this book now!" link.
Ways of the Warrior
If you go by the number of titles published, and by the quality of the books written on Dark Age warriors and weapons, the 1990s may one day be considered the Golden Age of fighting historiography: There are low-priced commercial reprints of many Oakeshott and Ellis Davidson titles, Paddy Griffith's punchy Viking Art of War, and rows upon rows of fully illustrated coffeetable books depicting knights and swords in all aspects and angles. Sure, there are duds. But anyone who snoozed through Hereward in search of insights into the lives, loves, and fighting spirit of Anglo Saxon warriors is in for a pleasant surprize. Stephen Pollington's The English Warrior is as good as it gets.
While the works of H.R. Ellis Davidson may have prepared the ground for documenting a historically accurate picture of Anglo Saxon warrior life, Pollington brings in just enough testosterone to actually capture the essence of warriorhood.
He includes bt archaeological and literary evidence (which thankfully is presented both in Old English and modern translations for those of us who are trying to convince ourselves that those 3 semesters of Old English at school actually left us with a memory imprint...)
The three main sections of "Warrior", "Weapons" and "Warfare" present one of the best overviews of pre-Conquest military historiography I have come across. As an extra bonus, the appendices include Old English and modern versions of The Battle of Maldon", the "Finnsburgh" fragment, and the "Battle of Brunanburh".
Anglo-Saxon Books -- who also published Terry Brown's English Martial Arts -- appears to have cornered the market in readable, high-quality historical Anglophilia. (Most of their titles are available in North America through Paul & Company Publishers Consortium, Inc., c/o PCS Data Processing Inc., 360 West 31st Street, New York, NY 10001; tel. (212)564-3730 ext. 264).
Author: Pollington, Stephen
Title: The English Warrior from Earliest Times to 1066, Hockwold-cum-Wilton: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1996; 267 pp., line drawings. Softbound.
Hammerterz Rating: HHH 1/2
Available for US$27.95. Contact Anglo-Saxon at AngloSaxon@compuserve.com.
Home
• Reviews • Biography
• Sample Chapters
Links • Order the book • Contact the author