First published in 1981 and accompanying the hugely popular BBC documentary series of the same name, is the bestselling book that helped establish Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians. The book is still highly regarded for its research in the field and continues to sell on even 30 years after publication. Updated with the latest archaeological research new chapters on the most influential yet widely unrecognized people of the British isles, illuminates the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest of 1066. In this fully revised and updated edition, Michael Wood vividly conjures some of the most important people in British history such as Hadrian, a Libyan refugee from the Arab conquests and arguably the most important person of African origin in British history, to Queen Boadicea, the leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans. Here too, warts and all, are the Saxon, Viking and Norman kings who laid the political foundations of England: Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and William the Conqueror, whose victory at Hastings in 1066 marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England.