I am actually with Ben here that 1066 is the key date.
As Kipling put it, 'England’s on the anvil – hear the hammers ring.' It was the fusion of Saxon and Norman that made England great.
That said, Alfred the Great was awesome and I am all for celebrate Athelstan and 927, too.
As Kipling put it, 'England’s on the anvil – hear the hammers ring.' It was the fusion of Saxon and Norman that made England great.
That said, Alfred the Great was awesome and I am all for celebrate Athelstan and 927, too.
I guess I have to actually commit to this bit now so here goes.View quoted post on X
I’m not saying the House of Wessex are irrelevant and uninteresting, I’m saying the terrible greatness of England was built by the Norman stirrup and the state built out of William’s Westminster and his Tower of London: viscous, aristocratic, imperial and extractive. By contrast the House of Wessex failed miserably in the end to build a strong state and keep the country of Danish hands. William, not Athelstan, is the real father of the English state.
The real anniversary is 2066.
In my view the psychology behind Tolkien was to write an alternative mythology as if the Normans had never conquered England because after nearly a millienium all that greatness was finally exhausted, ended and distant enough to make people long for an England where it had never happened at all. His Hobbitcel mentality is confused and troubled by that Norman greatness and on some level wishes it away in a search for alternative originators. But the greatness in England was never the Shire, it was the lust for conquest of the Normans that has burnt out in us leaving William a troubling, even scary figure.
