Queen Emma and the Vikings by Harriet O'brien
Emma was one of England's most remarkable queens: a determined, manipulative and forceful woman who made her mark on a Europe beset by Vikings. Her story is one of power, politics, love, greed and scandal a thousand years ago. By birth a Norman, she married and outlived two kings of England. One was an incompetent monarch some twenty years her senior; the other was a Viking warrior ten years her junior. When she died at the age of nearly seventy she had also witnessed the coronations of two of her sons: Harthcnut the Viking and Edward the Confessor. From child-bride and international pawn, she became an unscrupulous political player and was diversely regarded as a generous Christian patron, the admired co-regent of the nation, and a Machiavellian mother. She was, above all, a survivor: her life was punctuated by dramatic falls, all of which she overcame. In tracing Emma's story the England that became her home emerges: far from being benighted, it was a rich nation with strong Christian and cultural traditions that are the root of Englishness, the Anglo-Saxon stock. Yet Emma herself was the formidable catalyst for the country's immutable change into a Norman state. In 1066, fourteen years after she died, her Norman family invaded England. Emma's story also tells us why this happened. Harriet O'Brien gives us a vivid picture of England after the Dark Ages - from its food, clothes and herbal remedies for infertility to Viking boat building and laws against over-eating. Richly detailed and beautifully written, Queen Emma is history at its most compelling.
Harriet O'Brien is a writer and editor working in London for a range of newspapers and magazines including the Independent and Conde Nast Traveller. Her first book, Forgotten Land - a Rediscovery of Burma, won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award in 1991.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780747574897 |
| ISBN 10 | 0747574898 |
| Title | Queen Emma and the Vikings |
| Author | Harriet O'brien |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2005-08-01 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |