Edmund by Francis Young

Edmund by Francis Young

What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines? The ruins of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds are a memorial to the largest Romanesque church ever built. This Suffolk market town is now a quiet place, out of the way, eclipsed by its more famous neighbour Cambridge. But present obscurity may conceal a find as significant as the emergence from beneath a Leicester car-park of the remains of Richard I. For Bury, as Francis Young now reveals, is the probable site of the body - placed in an 'iron chest' but lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries - of Edmund: martyred monarch of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia and, well before St George, England's first patron saint. After the king was slain by marauding Vikings in the ninth century, the legend which grew up around his murder led to the foundation in Bury of one of the pre-eminent shrines of Christendom. In showing how Edmund became the pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied, the author points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.

Simultaneously a sophisticated work of history, a compelling detective story and a moving meditation on what it is to be English, this is a fascinating and wonderful book-- Tom Holland
The author's enthusiasm for his subject, and for the quest to find the mortal remains of St. Edmund, everywhere shines through. Authoritative and reliable, this volume is at the same time an enjoyable and engaging read. -- John Ashdown-Hill, MBE

Francis Young is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and achieved his PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767 (2015) and The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds: History, Legacy and Discovery (2016), amongst others.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781350165250
ISBN 10	1350165255
Title	Edmund
Author	Francis Young
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2020-09-03
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.