Historians are creatures of their environments. We are often told that works of history have as much to reveal about historians’ own times as about the past. As early plans for this book began to take shape, I was therefore struck by the irony of timing as events of the Arab Spring, a manifestation of the reactions to global political change stemming from economic crisis, began to take place, followed by protests and riots in English cities. With the symbolism of demonstrative action in Cairo's Tahrir Square and the focus of opposition to Muammar Gaddafi manifesting itself in Libya's second city, Benghazi, the power of place in contemporary politics became very apparent. That power became yet more apparent at a point when the book itself was well underway in 2016 as Britain's (at least, England and Wales’) relationships with Continental and Insular neighbours were thrown into confusion by a popular vote to leave the European Union, itself in part a reaction to migration in the wake of the tragic consequences of upheaval and repression following the Arab Spring. This book, however, is in part a product of my longstanding desire to be more than an ‘Anglo-Saxonist’ and to draw out cross-Channel links between the Anglo-Carolingian kingdom of England and its near neighbours; it was not my intention to provide medieval parallels for the modern world. But if readers wish to draw these comparisons, as indeed they are welcome to do, this sort of explanation would probably make some kind of sense.

The inspirations I have been conscious of were somewhat more prosaic, stemming from a reading of a couple of episodes of rebellion (or resistance) in the Anglo-Saxon and Norman worlds. The first is the rebellion of Æthelwold, nephew of King Alfred, whose escapades across Wessex have been part of my understanding of Anglo-Saxon England since I borrowed my parents’ Suzuki Samurai jeep and took some southern English journeys in the summer of 1998, at the instigation of my thesis supervisor, Barbara Yorke, who advised me to get out and understand the places relating to the royal estates of Anglo-Saxon Wessex.