It is surely the most famous date in English history. On 14 October 1066 William of Normandy’s army defeated and killed King Harold at the battle of Hastings. It was the decisive moment in the Norman conquest of England, which heralded the end of...
The Medieval era is often dismissed as a brutal period of darkness, ignorance, bloodshed and disease – the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ dividing classical antiquity from the age of enlightenment. But while warfare, invasions and religious persecution...