2025/024: In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages — Max Adams

Perhaps post-Roman Britain, far from the desolate, ruinous, plague-ridden chaos of Gildas’s portrait, was a genteel, faded seaside town of a land. Perhaps. [loc. 344]

In which Max Adams travels -- on foot, or by motorbike or car or boat -- through the British Isles, exploring early medieval sites and discussing their context. In the Land of Giants is as much a travel book as it's history in action: though there's little documentary evidence for life in Britain between the departure of the Romans and the time of Alfred the Great, there remain buildings, artefacts, monuments and landscapes from the 'Dark Ages'. Adams discusses the population decline in this period, but makes clear it wasn't a chaotic apocalypse of sword, fire and famine. 'People survived; some thrived; some left in the hope of a better life...' [loc. 775]

As well as the narrative of a country living amid the ruins of Romanisation -- Dark Ages armies marched on Roman roads, but town life had disintegrated -- this is a book full of fascinating facts. I learnt that Baldock, in Hertfordshire, was named after Baghdad; that Viking ships sailed up the Lea all the way to Hertford, and were stranded there when the river was dammed and drained; that the Scillies were a single landmass in the early days of the Roman occupation; that brewster and baxter are surnames deriving from female occupations (a baxter is a female baker, a brewster a female brewer)... And Adams' writing about walking to quiet one's thoughts, walking to regain a sense of the landscape, make me want to leave the city and head for the empty places.

A few typos, which really should have been fixed by now (it was slavers, not slaves, who took St Patrick to Ireland) and a few references to page numbers rather than locations. Most of the photographs are rather dark and indistinct in the ebook, but it's easy to find online images of the sites Adams visited.

I bought this in October 2016, and finally read it (very slowly) as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.