David Bates is Professorial Fellow at the University of East Anglia, and a world-leading expert on Norman and Anglo-Norman history. He has held positions at several universities in Britain and France, and his many books include Normandy before 1066, The Normans and Empire, and, most recently, a biography of William the Conqueror in the Yale English Monarchs series.

David Bates has brought together a veritable Who’s Who of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman studies. In engaging and well-illustrated prose, they bring the events of 1066 to life from a range of perspectives ­– governmental, archaeological, military, social. A book for scholar and layperson alike, this is the introduction to the Conquest the twenty-first century has been waiting for!