Ceawlin

This provocative study of medieval Britain presents a groundbreaking theory on the collapse of the post-Roman order and the formation of England.

In Ceawlin: The Man Who Created England, Rupert Matthews draws on newly available evidence, including written sources and newly uncovered artifacts, to present a radically new narrative of post-Roman Britain. In place of the anarchy and mayhem that comprise conventional accounts of the period, Rupert suggests that Romanized governmental structures managed to survive the fifth century economic collapse. These, he argues, reemerged in a new form in the later sixth century.

The key figure in these pivotal events was Ceawlin, King of Wessex in the 570s. It was he who finally smashed the old order with his ambitious power grab. His success opened the way to the creation of the England that we know today with its distinctive culture, language and character.