BOOK REVIEW
The King in the North: the life and times of Oswald of Northumbria
by Max Adams pub. Head of Zeus, £9.99.
This book should appeal to anyone who has wondered about the saint to
whom our church is dedicated. St Oswald was King of Northumbria for 8
years from A.D. 634 to 642. During that time he was recognised as overlord
of almost all the other kingdoms of Britain, Wessex, Mercia, Lindsey and
East Anglia and of the Britons of Rheged, Strathclyde, Powys and Gwynedd,
the Scots of Dal Riata and the Picts of the far north. He himself was an
Anglo-Saxon but had spent much of his youth in exile on Iona where he had
learnt the Celtic customs of Christianity. When he returned to Northumbria he
invited Aidan to come from Iona to Lindisfarne to preach the Gospel in
Northumbria. It is his support for Aidan that really makes us think of Oswald
as a saint. A lot of his life was spent in warfare and he was eventually killed
in battle against the pagan Fenda of Mercia near what is now called
Oswestry in Shropshire.
This is a broad outline of Oswald’s life. “The King in the North” is good at
giving an idea of what life must have been like in Dark Age Britain. It goes
into detail about the archaeological evidence for this and is particularly good
at making clear the family connections between the different dynasties of
rulers in the various kingdoms of Britain. Admittedly, it is sometimes
necessary to concentrate hard to remember who the various characters are,
particularly as members of the same family often had very similar names.
The author is himself an archaeologist and has visited most of the presentday sites connected with Oswald’s life is very good at describing what the
landscape is like now and how it might have looked in Oswald’s time.
Similarly, he describes buildings from that time, parts of which still exist, such
as the crypt under Hexham Abbey. The latter dates from much later in the
Middle Ages but the remains of the Anglo-Saxon church still lie beneath it.
There is even, in Count Durham, a complete, tiny Anglo-Saxon church at
Escomb which is still in use today. This shows how skilled the masons were
at that time just as manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels show the skill of
the scribes. What we call the Dark Ages were not that dark!
After his death in battle Oswald’s body was dismembered and parts of it were
claimed by different churches, both in England and on the Continent. It would
seem at one point that he had three heads! One of the illustrations in the
book is of a beautiful reliquary in the shape of a head made in Germany.
The book is a fairly fat paperback and is not exactly an easy read but is a
most rewarding one and is the most detailed recent study of Oswald. Anyone
wishing to borrow my copy is welcome to do so.
Paula
StOM Page 7