Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England
By Annie Whitehead ISBN: 978-1526748119 (Pen &Sword Books, 2020) - £11.99
Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England is a thoroughly good read, and the main reason I can work out for this is disconcertingly simple: it’s well written. It’s well researched, it’s well structured, and (unless you’ve picked up this magazine by accident) the subject matter is intrinsically interesting.
Whitehead writes very engagingly about a range of characters, some of whom are slowly creeping more into the national consciousness but most of whom are broadly (or entirely) unknown to most of us. These women have such evocative names, too: Ælfwynn and Ætheflæd, Gytha and Wulfhild, to name but a few. And to describe them as ‘Women of Power’ is no overstatement: not only were they often the source of power and influence behind and around their sons and husbands; many of them were also, of course, powerful in their own rights – queens and abbesses in particular.
