Author:Philip Parker
The Northmen’s Fury tells the Viking story, from the first pinprick raids of the eighth century to the great armies that left their Scandinavian homelands to conquer larger parts of France, Britain and Ireland. It recounts the epic voyages that took them across the Atlantic to the icy fjords of Greenland and to North America over four centuries before Columbus and east to the great rivers of Russia and the riches of the Byzantine empire.
One summer’s day in 793, death arrived from the sea. The raiders who sacked the island monastery of Lindisfarne were the first Vikings, sea-borne attackers who brought two centuries of terror to northern Europe. Before long the sight of their dragon-prowed longships and the very name of Viking gave rise to fear and dread, so much so that monks were reputed to pray each night for delivery from ‘the Northmen’s Fury’. Yet for all their reputation as bloodthirsty warriors, the Vikings possessed a sophisticated culture that produced art of great beauty, literature of abiding power and kingdoms of surprising endurance.
The Northmen’s Fury describes how and why a region at the edge of Europe came to dominate and to terrorise much of the rest of the continent for nearly three centuries and how, in the end, the coming of Christianity and the growing power of kings tempered the Viking ferocity and stemmed the tide of raids. It relates the astonishing achievement of the Vikings in forging far-flung empires whose sinews were the sea and whose arteries were not roads but maritime trading routes.
The blood of the Vikings runs in millions of veins in Europe and the Americas and the tale of their conquests, explorations and achievements continues to inspire people around the world.
It is quite a feat to write history this good... Everyone who visits the British Museum's Viking exhibition should go clutching a copy of this engaging and splendidly written book.
—— Dan Jones , Sunday TimesParker has a traveller's eye for landscape and a storyteller's sense of events and character; The Northmen's Fury is probably the most lively and well-informed introduction to the subject available today.
—— New StatesmanParticularly fascinating... [Parker] proves expert at treading a delicate line between scholarship and his relish for the fantastical.
—— Tom Holland , The TimesThis book is a treasury with treats galore. Lucid, comprehensive, it is a work of reference which deserves to become a classic.
—— Historical Novel SocietyPerfectly timed for the forthcoming British Museum exhibition.
—— Sunday TimesPhilip Parker has encapsulated the Viking story in this book.
—— CGA Magazine[An] energetic and intelligent guide to the Viking world.
—— A.N. Wilson , Sunday TelegraphA detailed study that succeeds in conveying the impact of the Viking age... A fascinating read.
—— Martin Arnold , Literary ReviewEngrossing
—— Mail on SundayCharming and perceptive romp through the ration books... It is apparent that Nicol, whose words exude practical optimism, would have made a good Land Girl.
—— The Sunday TimesIllustrated throughout with jaunty, witty, government posters... Nicol wants our latter-day green movement to look back and learn a thing or two from forgotten habits of the past
—— The TabletRich
—— Christopher Hirst , IndependentThis is a scholarly, readable and wonderfully eccentric homage to India as seen through foreign eyes
—— Good Book GuideSpellbinding
—— EscapeHitler's Furies is the first book to follow the biographical trajectories of individual women whose youthful exuberance, loyalty to the Führer, ambition, and racism took them to the deadliest sites in German-occupied Europe. Drawing on immensely rich source material, Wendy Lower integrates women perpetrators and accomplices into the social history of the Third Reich, and illuminates them indelibly as a part of post-war East and West German memory that has been, until this book, unmined
—— Claudia Koonz, author of Mothers in the FatherlandStomach-churning
—— Illtyd Harrington , West End ExtraCompelling... Lower's careful research proves that the capacity for indifferent cruelty is not reserved for men – it exists in all of us
—— Renae Merle , Washington PostLower’s impressive analysis is a painful but transfixing read
—— Christopher Hirst , Independent
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