What I'm reading: 1066

For no particular reason, thought I'd throw this out.  I'm actually reading many things, as I typically have a dozen books I read at the same time.  Among these are my annual jaunt through one of the books of The Lord of the Rings (this time, following a run through The Hobbit, now reading it again aloud with the family), as well as a new translation of The Canterbury Tales,  Moby Dick, James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, and Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.  I've been brushing up on my Hegel recently, as well as reading up on some 17th century history to help my oldest in AP European History. This in addition to starting to read through the Catechism and study up on Vatican II, since I've been given the possible chance to do a lecture series on that next September. Plus it's my 12 year old's turn to read with me through To Kill a Mockingbird.

I focus on David Howarth's 1066: The Year of Conquest, however, because I'm going through a hardcover version, since I lost the original version some time ago.  So I thought I'd run through it.  What strikes me about this book is its accessibility.  You don't have to be a scholar of the 11th century to get what he's saying.  He walks the reader through the year 1066, focusing on how the various parties involved in the fateful battle at Hastings came together.  He writes well,  is engaging, and lays out the basic facts that are known to most who study that period.

What is fascinating about Howarth, however, is the flagrant bias he brings to the table.  He's an Englishman, and a proud son of the Saxon race.  You don't have to read long to see his sympathies are with the English people that October morning.  The irony here is how he frequently points out the recurring meme of modern history that we can't trust much of the source material because it was written by the winners.  In this case, it's those rascally Norman chroniclers whose versions are suspect.  It's ironic  because Howarth himself brings such a loaded bias to the table when he recounts the bold and wonderful and perfectly hip modern flavored Harold against the 11th century manifestation of the Galactic Emperor himself: William the Bastard (a.k.a. William the Conqueror).

To his credit, he admits as much.  He lets us know, like any child of his generation  he has basic contempt for Edward the Confessor and his religious ways, seems to have admiration mixed with pity for King Harold, and is scared out of his pants of William.  That this is seen in every paragraph in every chapter makes this a welcome admission.  But all too often, modern history approaches events and individuals with equally slanted takes and biased interpretations.  All too often,  however, they refuse to admit what is so flagrantly obvious.  Which is why it is easy to imagine that chroniclers of the past may have been biased  too.  Almost as biased as the historians and scholars of the modern era.