NICHOLAS VINCENT has published a dozen books and some hundred academic articles on various aspects of English and European history in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, having arrived at Norwich via Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Canterbury. He is now Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia, where he is currently finishing an edition of the charters of the Plantagenet kings and queens from Henry II to King John, and leads a major project researching the background to Magna Carta. Nicholas is a Fellow of the British Academy.

From the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Bosworth Field, Nicholas Vincent tells the story of how Britain was born.
When William, Duke of Normandy, killed King Harold and seized the throne of England, England's language, culture, politics and law were transformed. Over the next four hundred years, under royal dynasties that looked principally to France for inspiration and ideas, an English identity was born, based in part on the struggle for control over the other parts of the British Isles (Scotland, Wales and Ireland), in part on rivalry with the kings of France. From these struggles emerged English law and an English Parliament, the English language, English humour and England's first overseas empires.
In this thrilling and accessible account, Nicholas Vincent not only tells the story of the rise and fall of dynasties, but investigates the lives and obsessions of a host of lesser men and women, from archbishops to peasants, and from soldiers to scholars, upon whose enterprise the social and intellectual foundations of Englishness now rest.
This the first book in the four-volume Brief History of Britain which brings together some of the leading historians to tell our nation's story from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the present day.
Combining the latest research with accessible and entertaining story-telling, it is the ideal introduction for students and general readers.