'Angus Wilson is one of the most enjoyable novelists of the 20th century... Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) analyses a wide range of British society in a complicated plot that offers all the pleasures of detective fiction combined with a steady and humane insight.' Margaret Drabble First published in 1956, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes draws upon perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history: the 'Piltdown Man', finally exposed in 1953. The novel's protagonist is Gerald Middleton, professor of early medieval history and taciturn creature of habit. Separated from his Swedish wife, Gerald is increasingly conscious of his failings. Moreover, some years ago he was involved in an excavation that led to the discovery of a grotesque idol in the tomb of Bishop Eorpwald. The sole survivor of the original excavation party, Gerald harbours a potentially ruinous secret...

Gerald Middleton is a sixty-year-old self-proclaimed failure. Worse than that, he’s "a failure with a conscience." As a young man, he was involved in an archaeological dig that turned up an obscene idol in the coffin of a seventh-century bishop and scandalized a generation. The discovery was in fact the most outrageous archaeological hoax of the century, and Gerald has long known who was responsible and why. But to reveal the truth is to risk destroying the world of cozy compromises that, personally as well as professionally, he has long made his own. One of England's first openly gay novelists, Angus Wilson was a dirty realist who relished the sleaze and scuffle of daily life. Slashingly satirical, virtuosically plotted, and displaying Dickensian humor and nerve, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes features a vivid cast of characters that includes scheming academics and fading actresses, big businessmen toggling between mistresses and wives, media celebrities, hustlers, transvestites, blackmailers, toadies, and even one holy fool. Everyone, it seems, is either in cahoots or in the dark, even as comically intrepid Gerald Middleton struggles to maintain some dignity while digging up a history of lies.

On its appearance in 1952 the Times Literary Supplement called Hemlock and After 'a novel of remarkable power and literary skill which deserves to be judged by the highest standards'. Angus Wilson's first novel is concerned with the hypocrisies of middle-class society. The protagonist, Bernard Sands, is a novelist and an intellectual who tries to found a centre for young writers. However, Sands is a secret homosexual and in the post-war Britain of the time his liberal ideas cause much anxiety to those in charge. Surrounded by false friends and scheming enemies Sands has to come to terms with his emotions and is forced to decide where his loyalties lie. A compassionately written novel Hemlock and After explores the conflict of duty and love in one man's life and the consequences of our choices. Written at a time when homosexuality was still an offence Hemlock and After is a brilliantly handled novel from a writer who was described by John Betjeman as 'mercilessly accurate and never dull.'

At 64 Gerald Middleton, a former professor of medieval history, is filled with self-recrimination and self-disgust, but he gets a chance to rectify his life.

The question of the British presence in Anglo-Saxon England readdressed by archaeologists, historians, linguists, and place-name specialists. The number of native Britons, and their role, in Anglo-Saxon England has been hotly debated for generations; the English were seen as Germanic in the nineteenth century, but the twentieth saw a reinvention of the German "past". Today, the scholarly community is as deeply divided as ever on the issue: place-name specialists have consistently preferred minimalist interpretations, privileging migration from Germany, while other disciplinary groups have been less united in their views, with many archaeologists and historians viewing the British presence, potentially at least, as numerically significant or even dominant. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on this complex issue, by bringing together contributions from different disciplinary specialists and exploring the interfaces between various categories of knowledge about the past. They assemble both a substantial body of evidence concerning the presence of Britons and offer a variety of approaches to the central issues of the scale of that presence and its significance across the seven centuries of Anglo-Saxon England. NICK HIGHAM is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: RICHARD COATES, MARTIN GRIMMER, HEINRICH HARKE, NICK HIGHAM, CATHERINE HILLS, LLOYD LAING, C.P. LEWIS, GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER, O.J. PADEL, DUNCANPROBERT, PETER SCHRIJVER, DAVID THORNTON, HILDEGARD L.C. TRISTRAM, DAMIAN TYLER, HOWARD WILLIAMS, ALEX WOOLF

This is not a book about the Anglo-Saxons, but a book about books about Anglo-Saxons. It describes the academic discipline of Anglo-Saxonism, the methods of study used, the underlying assumptions, and the uses to which it has been put. Methods and motives have changed over time, but right from the start there have been the constant themes of Anglo-Saxon democracy and the rights of the freeborn Englishman. They have given rise to ideas and perceptions that have greatly influenced the development of English society and political history.

Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England is the first examination of Christian apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England, focusing on the use of biblical narratives in Old English sermons. This work demonstrates that apocryphal media are a substantial part of the apparatus of Christian tradition inherited by Anglo-Saxons.