The Last English King

In 1066, a ‘jumped-up little Norman and his bunch of psychopaths’ cross the water and alter the course of English history. Three years later, and Walt, King Harold’s only surviving bodyguard, is still emotionally and physically scarred by the loss of his king and country. Wandering through Asia Minor, he meets Quint, a renegade monk with a healthy line in scepticism and a hearty appetite for knowledge. It is he who persuades Walt, little by little, to tell his extraordinary story.And so begins a roller-coaster ride into an era of enduring fascination. Weaving fiction round fact, Julian Rathbone brings to vibrant, exciting and often amusing life the shadowy figures and events that preceded the Norman Conquest.We see Edward, confessing far more than he ever did in the history books. We meet the warring nobles of Mercia and Wessex; Harold and his unruly clan; Canute’s descendants with their delusions of grandeur; predatory men, pushy women, subdued Scots and wily Welsh. And we meet William of Normandy, a psychotic thug with interesting plans for the ‘racial sanitation’ of the Eurosceptics across the water.The Last English King raises issues, both daring and delightful, that question the nature of history itself. Where are the lines between fact, interpretation or recreation - and did the French really stop for a two-hour lunch during the Battle of Hastings?