Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War


Fabulous exhibition at the British Library looking at the Anglo-Saxons.

I studied this period at school and university and anything you could want to be there was as well as lots of new discoveries. I moved from object to object remembering things I had long thought I’d forgotten. The show was nicely organised chronologically around the main kingdoms as they came to prominence the around broader themes of language and literature, the church and conquests. It was a nice touch to end with the Domesday Book treating it not as a tool for Norman conquest but as a reflection of the excellent land records which had been kept by the Anglo-Saxons. My old “Were the Norman’s innovators?” essay plan came flooding back!

There were so many highlight’s it’s hard to pick a few but here goes! How about Cuthbert’s bible, the earliest European bound book, which looked as fresh as if it had been made yesterday as it had been in Cuthbert’s coffin. Alternatively the Codex Amiatinus, on loan from Florence, which had been taken to the continent by a bishop who then died. For years it was thought to be Italian but recent research has shown that the iconography matched other works produced in Monkwearmouth. Incidentally it’s also over a foot deep! How about the earliest letter written in English or the only written manuscript of Beowulf?

My favourite object, despite the Alfred Jewel from the Ashmolean being there, was actually the first one in the show. It was a ceramic lid to a cremation pot of a man sitting on a chair with his hands over his ears. I’d never seen or heard of this before and it was such as touching piece. It looked a bit like an Egyptian scribe or the pictures of the evangelists in the bibles you were about to see but why did he have his hand over his ears!

I will say though that if you’re now an Anglo-Saxon geek you might find it a bit too much! Even I had a moment where I thought I couldn’t face another illuminated bible even it had belonged to King Aelthred.

Closes on 19 February 2019

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