Val Morgan is a retired academic with a lifelong passion for literature and history. She taught at Essex University between 2002 – 2015. Living in the south-east of England, her interest in the Anglo-Norman period was triggered by the local landscapes, the mottes and baileys, the castles, churches and scattered ruins that still lie in an enduring pastoral countryside. Her four novels set in that period required extensive research in museums, strongholds, churches, landscapes as well as studying the biographies of many astonishing and little known personalities, reading the chronicles and making use of the latest academic research and secondary historical sources. In this book, drawing on these resources and going beyond the novels, she has created a vivid collection of true life stories, told through the dramatic interplay of personalities. Val Morgan was born in Ipswich but has spent most of her life in Colchester.
She is a keen walker in the landscapes of the Essex-Suffolk border. She has been married since 1973 and has two grown up children.
DEATHS DISASTERS AND DESTINIES – Val Morgan
Availability:
in stock
18,50£
Pages: 366
Language: English
ISBN 9791220144056
JP Morgan –
This is a most unusual book. The concept is to tell something about Anglo/Norman history through the lives of some who lived through that period. It is not an academic fact-based account of those times, about which hard facts are often absent from the chronicles. Nor is it a work of fiction, although necessarily much of what we are told cannot be verified. Rather the author tries to fill in the gaps in our knowledge by making inferences about events that seem likely, or at least reasonable, from what is known & in that way construct narrative stories about these people. Most of the names will be unfamiliar except to those already well-versed in England’s history after the invasion by William the Conqueror, whose death is the subject of chapter one. Thus for most of us this book will open windows through which we can peer into half-hidden corners of an unfolding story. It is not always about what did happen but what could have happened and in some cases how events might have turned out differently but for the cold hand of fate intervening. It’s an imaginative way of presenting English history & written in a style that makes for an accessible look at a period that shaped much of how The State has evolved to this day. An interesting, at times fascinating read.