The King in the North

 Sometimes a student will ask me what the point of history is. Normally, they'll be being a pain - and deliberately so - and they get a quick one-liner back. Sometimes, they'll be serious. History doesn't play a part in their life; they live in a present dictated by immediate need and want. Mum and dad work jobs that don't require an understanding of the past. It's the future that matters, not the past, surely?

I admit, this is a question I sometimes struggle with. No such struggle exists with my other specialism: law is the fabric that binds our society and manages acceptable behaviours. It imposes both obligations and entitlements. You study law to understand those rules and regulations, to understand how society can come to define itself by its values. You study it to understand the institutions of politics and power. You study it to reach an informed viewpoint on the absolute mess the government has made this week. It is easy to define law as the now, rather than the then. These are the rules, these are how and why they exist, this is what it means for you.

And then sometimes you read something that reminds you exactly why history is relevant, and exactly why every person should understand it. Max Adams' The King in the North is such a book.

'Hang on,' I hear you cry, 'this is a book about the seventh century AD. Surely it cannot contain anything of relevance to a world in the twenty-first? This is a time when England didn't even exist, except as a series of warring kingdoms where some of the greater kings competed for primacy for a spell. Christianity was on the fringes of people's understanding. How can such a book and such a time hold any kind of insight into modern problems?'

Oh, ye of little faith. A lesson in history is not a lesson just in fables and moral lessons; it never has been. History (somewhat ironically) teaches us that. It isn't a lesson in good triumphing over evil, of absolutism that can give us a good sit down and talking to in relation to just what Oswiu did in 658 that we need to carry forward in life - it certainly doesn't help us to become a hairdresser (as one of my students proudly proclaimed a few weeks ago). And no: we don't become a better person for knowing that there was a royal foundation at Dewsbury that was burned down, rebuilt, and then burned down again (although there are some who would claim some kind of grandeur by association - these people are idiots).

What we get is an understanding. We are citizens. We are expected to play an active role in our society - that society governed by the law that is so easy to define - and to do this we must understand both the rules and regulations that dictate our onw behaviours, but also understand how these rules and regulations came to be and to understand the values of our nation and the influences over them, as well as the interests of our nation, our class, and those around us based on the past.

And it doesn't stop there. History is about understanding motivation. And this is something Max Adams does brilliantly. The seventh century is not a time blessed with a deluge of primary sources; what little exists to illuminate the lives of those who lived then must be floodlit by cross-reference with archaeology, geography, deduction and, at times, good old-fashioned supposition. This is a book that reminds us of something: while the historical and geographical contexts change, basic human psychology and motivation does not.

It is because of this that, despite the lack of sources beyond the Venerable Bede (who is leaned on to such an extent it's a wonder The Ecclesiastical History doesn't break except where needed), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Annals of Ulster, Adams has been able to craft a remarkable history. Bede is dissected (or, at least, his most famous work is; it's quite clear in the book that the only people being dissected are Oswald, the titular king in the north himself, and Saint Cuthbert, along with hundreds of nameless Northumbrian, Mercian and Anglian warriors of the Dark Ages) and analysed, his motivations in his narrative unpicked and compared to other, less well-known narratives. He is placed in the context of the clash between British and Roman Christianity, along with his geographical and historical location in the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. What comes from this judicious and critical use of sources is a truly wonderful work of history of relevance to us today, not only as a work of scholarship but as a reminder that Britain does not stand alone.

It's an odd lesson to take from the narrative of a king who reigned for only eight years, and that before the near-legendary Synod of Whitby. He reigned over only a small (relatively, at any rate) section of what is now England. Although Oswald became an overlord of other British kings to an extent, his overlordship crumbled on his death; it was his brother, Oswiu, who secured Oswald's legacy. What must be remembered is that Oswald was more than just his life, and this is brought home by Adams, who spends perhaps four chapters in total of the twenty in the book on the life of his subject. There is far more dedicated to the legacy of Oswald and the far-reaching influence that he had.

Born in around 604, Oswald was a scion of one of the habitual ruling houses of Bernicia, the more northerly of the two kingdoms that would later become Northumbria. His early life is obscure, but we do know that he was in exile in what is now western Scotland, at Iona, following the death of his father in battle and the assumption of the throne of the first Northumbrian Christian monarch, Edwin. As much time is spent on Edwin as Oswald, and with good reason: Edwin was at least as influential as Oswald in normalising Christianity. Perhaps without Edwin, there would have been no lasting Christian influence, no opportunity for Oswald to lay the foundations of the monastery on Lindisfarne (although, given Oswald's own Irish Christianity, I'd say that's pretty unlikely considering that Oswald's Christianity was more than the politically expedient skin-deep version worn by Edwin). What is certainly the case is that Edwin's rule laid the foundations for Oswald's, with only a brief diversion into paganism in between the two rulers after Edwin's defeat at the hands of Mercia in 632.

Adams paints the picture of the life of Oswald with consummate skill. This is no dry read; it is an absorbing book, written by a master of balance. Discussion of sources is lively and erudite. Human details are fleshed out with real insight into human nature and historical context. There are times when events and locations are obscured by the paucity of sources and Adams has to stray into supposition, but this only serves to enhance the book, just as the frequent diversions into descriptions of the landscape of Oswald's world add to the experience. It's a rare book that can have me referring to OS maps while reading, to get a real idea of the geography of events and to back up Adams' arguments. The use of modern landmarks also does nothing to detract from the history; these were real events that happened in real, identifiable (well, for the most part) places that remain unaltered, with the exception of the odd A road. The history of 1300 years ago is closer than we think.

The final thing that becomes clearer and clearer is the growth and interconnectedness of the world of ancient Northumbria. We can look at the obvious to start with: the union of Northumbria, as forged by Edwin, Oswald and Oswiu over the space of half a century or more created the first power of Anglo-Saxon England, before the primacy of Mercia in the eighth century, the conquest of the Vikings and the subsequent primacy of Wessex from the ninth century onwards. But this is more than just a local tale: Oswald received his education in the monastery at Iona, before earning his reputation in charge of a warband in Scotland. He became overlord of places as far afield as Anglesea and the Isle of Man. His death was on a battlefield a long way from his homeland, quite possibly in Wales, at Oswestry. In his lifetime trading networks continued to develop, shown by the suffix wic that can be found in places like Ipswich, Alnwick and other modern towns. These trading posts, impromptu since the fall of Rome, became more permanent, particularly around the coast as the North Sea Basin became more and more crucial to trade between continent and island.

This interconnectedness finds its most compelling evidence in the growth and consolidation of Christianity. We see the growing influence of the Roman Church. We see how the British Christians become more isolated, playing an at-best secondary role to the increasing rivalry between Irish and Roman Churches following the mission of Augustine in 597. We see the last hurrah - in this epoch, at least - of British paganism in the form of the Mercian Penda. And finally and most tellingly, we see how expedience leads to the Synod of Whitby and the political acceptance of the primacy of Rome over the Church of Ireland and the sidelining of the parochial in favour of the international. The arguments produced by Bede - in the early eighth century - could be applied to the twenty-first century almost without changing the wording. A small world, therefore, became larger and more enlightened by what can only be referred to as global connections. Oswald himself took on a European character after his death, with his martyrdom on the battlefield leading to a cult that took root as far afield as Switzerland.

I was engrossed and delighted by Adams' book. It has reconnected me with history in a way that was timely and much-needed, on both a personal and wider level. A book which had me captivated from the very first page has delivered a real treat. I cannot recommend it highly enough.