The Conquest
The Norman Conquest. By D. J. A. Matthew. (Batsford, 42s.) The Normans. By Timothy Baker. (Cassell, 42s.) 1066: The Story of a Year. By Denis Butler. (Anthony Blond, 30s.) The Conquest of England. By Eric Linklater. (Hodder and Stoughton, 35s.) THE harvest of the bumper crop of books on the Norman Conquest is still being gathered. The quantity of writers of all kinds who have wished to have a say on the topic is surprisingly large; whether there are enough readers to go round only the publishers can tell, but provision has been made for almost every type. Two of the biggest guns went off before the fateful year began, with Professor David Douglas's authorita- tive biography of William I and Professor Frank Barlow's detailed account of the English church immediately before the Conquest, and only the latest and most rapidly written works have been able to use their findings, but no historian of the period need be short of books to read or theories to demolish. The Norman Conquest remains the most familiar and yet the most controversial episode in English history.
Besides its value as a jousting-ground for his- torical technicians, it is generally recognised that no event in our past has had more vital influence on the national life, and there is in addition the drama of the year 1066, when so many happen- ings were fortuitous or might well have produced other results. If William had been accepted as heir of the Confessor without the arbitrament of war, if the weather had not kept him on the Norman shore for almost a month, if Harold had been able to keep his fleet and army in position along the south coast, if Harald Hardrada had not chosen that precise moment to invade North- umbria, if William had had to face a battle such as Hastings and then himself had had to deal with the Danes, if the battle on the fourteenth of Octo- ber had gone the other way, if the English after Hastings had universally accepted the Conqueror —how different English history and European history would have been!
The year of Waterloo was far less critical. Napoleon was doomed at least as early as 1812 and a victory in Belgium could not have given him control of Europe. Even 1940 in retrospect may seem less of a watershed in British history; it will be argued that Hitler with Russia still in- tact would have been content with a neutral Eng- land, with wealth and arms enough left to pre- serve the status quo in Asia and Africa. But if any of the chances in 1066 had fallen dif- ferently; above all, had William been vanquished and slain at Hastings, English history, political, social and institutional, would have been pro- foundly different. And perhaps it is the realisation of this, made far more vivid by the last eighty years of historical studies, that has inspired so many to weigh up once more the probabilities and analyse the results.
The four books here noticed represent four different kinds of historical writing. Dr Matthew's book is a solid work of scholarship based on research among the original documents over a number of years; it is a historian's presentation of the evidence. Mr Baker is likewise a trained historian, but his principal interests lie in fields other than the eleventh century, and he is writ- ing a period up. Mr Butler, it would seem, is not an academic but he has been assisted and advised by professionals and has built up his book from hard work among the sources. Finally, Mr Link- later is, as all are aware, a distinguished novelist
and man of letters who has given to the story a particular slant towards the Scandinavian culture which he knows so well.
Those unacquainted with academic history will scarcely be aware of the number and complexity of the problems connected with the Norman Conquest. Dr Matthew has faced them nearly all, and his account is therefore a serious contribu- tion from which all specialists can profit even if they do not agree with all his findings. For eighty years the pendulum of scholarly judgment has swung backwards and forwards between the catastrophic and evolutionary interpretation of the results of the Conquest. In very recent years the swing has been towards the latter of the two, and Dr Matthew pinpoints feudal, military, tenurial and administrative similarities between the Confessor's reign and the Conqueror's. He tends to minimise or to regard as evolutionary and therefore inevitable the undoubted changes in English institutions and society in the fifty years after 1066.
This outlook necessitates an ironing-out of many creases, particularly in monastic and re- ligious history, and a virtual neglect—only too frequent among British historians—of the 'com- mon market' of ideas and skills and tastes that was established by the Channel bridge of Anglo- Norman administration. But he has read very widely and among unfamiliar texts, and he is 'with it' also in his wide sweep into social and art history. His illustrations, if good, are only in- directly relevant, but his book is tightly packed with ideas and arguments. It will be valuable for colleagues and able undergraduates rather than the general reader or the sixth-former.
These two categories will be better suited with Mr Baker's book, which is an excellent piece of vulgarisation. The author, as the jacket reminds us, successfully accomplished the feat of potting Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and if it would be unfair to say that he has shown the same expertise here in dealing with a wider selection of material, those familiar with the literature will recognise the sources of many of his sections. No one will quarrel with this : indeed we may admire his skill. This is probably the best book produced this year in its class, that of a lively and competent précis of technical and specialist studies. The numerous illustrations are excellent.
Mr Butler's book is more personal, imagina- tive and in some ways uncritical. His aim is to reconstruct the year from all sources, particu- larly from the narratives in prose and verse, and to bridge the gaps with reasonable amplifications and suppositions. His story reads well, and the account of the battle particularly well, but on that topic everyone will abound in his own sense. Mr Linklater's work has the interest that must attach to the reconstruction of history by a master of the writer's craft. It has also real value for the historian in its emphasis (perhaps over- emphasis) of the Viking world that lay around and within England at this time. That world has been largely forgotten by those who have wrangled about knight-service, manorial organi- sation and Domesday, but it must have a place in any total picture of the age.
Two traits of all the books may suggest that historians of the recent past have not worked in ,vain : all the authors seek to rest their founda- tions on a firm basis of academic scholarship, and not one of the authors shows any notable emotional bias towards either Anglo-Saxons or Normans.
DAVID KNOWLES
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