We are all European

Last week I visited the British Library's current exhibition: Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms - Art, Word, War. The items on display and the history they told were quite breathtaking. (https://youtu.be/87mYJuIVUCU). From the end of Roman rule in Britain to the Norman Conquest of England, the exhibition tells the Anglo-Saxon story: who they were, where they came from, their culture and their influence on modern-day Britain. The British Library also has an excellent website dedicated to the Anglo-Saxons: https://www.bl.uk/anglo-saxons.

Much of our knowledge of this period comes from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People completed in 731, which tells the story of the conversion of the English people to Christianity. Bede's account is the chief source of information about English history from the arrival of St Augustine in Kent in 597 until 731. But Bede begins his history much earlier, with Julius Caesar's invasion of England in 55 BCE. Bede used several other sources in compiling his own account, each of which he acknowledged. Bede, known as the Venerable Bede, was born in Northumbria, and at the age of seven entered the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow near Newcastle, where he spent all of his adult life. In the Middle Ages he was famous for the works he wrote on the interpretation of Scripture, on the natural world and on how to calculate the date of Easter.

What struck me particularly about this exhibition was how it demonstrated our close connections with Europe and how we have been a part of it since time immemorial. Our 'Englishness' has in fact many ancestors: from the Romans to the peoples of northern Europe and Scandinavia, we have many bloodlines. The Anglo-Saxons were migrants from northern Europe who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries. Initially comprising many small groups and divided into a number of kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxons were finally joined into a single political realm – the kingdom of England – during the reign of King Athelstan (924–939).They remained the dominant political force until the last king of Anglo-Saxon England, Harold II, was killed by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (Julian Harrison, British Library website: Who were the Anglo-Saxons?)

You may have seen the TV series: The Last Kingdom, based on Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories novels. Whilst the TV series was quite watchable, Cornwell's storytelling is excellent and a great way to learn about the lives, loves and wars of the Anglo-Saxons.

Another great book telling the story leading up to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest is The Last English King by Julian Rathbone

In the words of the Venerable Bede himself, writing about the Anglo-Saxons in the 8th century:

"They came from three very powerful Germanic peoples, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes. The people of Kent and the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are of Jutish origin and also those opposite the Isle of Wight, that are part of the kingdom of Wessex which is still today called the nation of the Jutes.

From the Saxon country, that is, the district know known as Old Saxony, came the East Saxons, the South Saxons and the West Saxons.

Besides this, from the country of the Angles, that is, the land between the kingdoms of the Jutes and the Saxons, which is called Angulus, came the East Angles, the Middle Angles, the Mercians, and all of the Northumbrian people (that is those people who dwell north of the River Humber) as well as the other Anglian peoples."

In other words, we are a real European mix!

The treasures on display included the beautifully illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels, Beowulf and Bede's Ecclesiastical History, alongside stunning finds from Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard. I saw for the first time the world-famous Domesday Book with its detailed description of late Anglo-Saxon England. The boundaries within its pages remained unchanged until the boundary changes of 1974!

Most impressive however was the Codex Amiatinus, a giant Northumbrian Bible taken to Italy in 716, which has returned to England for the first time in 1300 years. This was created at the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow which had one of the most excellent libraries in Europe at the time. Interestingly, it appears that the Anglo-Saxons and 'Europeans' were travelling back and forth well before the year 700.

Also on display were many interesting documents which paved the way for the unified Kingdom of England in the 10th century. The documents showing the agreement were ratified in three stages, the first of which took place in the town of my birth - Kingston-upon-Thames! Now I fully understand my old school song "The cobbled streets and gabled roofs of Kingston now are gone, And Saxon glories are but ghosts raised faintly by a stone" .

More than 1000 years ago, Kingston was the place where England began. The site of All Saints Church (where I was christened) was an important estate of the West Saxon Kings and host to Royal coronations. The Saxon King Egbert held his Great Council of 838 AD ‘in that famous place called Cyningestun’ and over the following centuries as many as eight Saxon kings were consecrated here. The most well-known of these Saxon kings was Athelstan, the first ruler who could truly be considered the King of England. After being crowned in Kingston in 925 AD Athelstan defeated the Scots and Vikings, unifying regional kingdoms into one nation.

And then I went out into the bookshop and saw the book Drawing Europe Together - it seemed apt.