England : from the fall of Rome to the Norman conquest.
(DVD) 

King Arthur. Alfred the Great. Sutton Hoo. Beowulf. We recognize these and other names from England before 1066, but the history of this wild and diverse land is shrouded in myth and legend. From the fall of Rome in the 4th century to the invasion of the Normans in the 11th century, England offers an incredible story of social, cultural, religious, and political change. This captivating tale can help us answer one of the great questions of history: How did this small island, far from the centers of Western civilization, become the great and powerful nation we know from the history books? England: From the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest takes you back to the rugged landscape of the premodern and early medieval British Isles. Over the course of 24 sweeping lectures, Professor Jennifer Paxton, of The Catholic University of America, surveys the forging of a great nation from the raw materials of warring kingdoms and migrating peoples. From Germanic tribes to Viking invasions to Irish missionaries, she brings to life an underexamined time and place. As you will discover, the trends driving England in the first millennium are remarkably similar to our world today. Waves of migration and inter-mixing disrupted the status quo and built a cohesive new Anglo-Saxon identity. Political vacuums were filled by war and stabilized by a legal system underpinned by property and contracts. And economic prosperity created a golden age of arts and literature. When the Romans arrived on the shores of southern England, they believed they had reached the edge of the Roman Empire, a place of little consequence. When they left in the 5th century, the island of Britain contained a number of small political groups and a wide variety of ethnicities. The Romans perhaps would have been shocked to see how the Anglo-Saxons who emerged from the ruins of Roman England would come to dominate Britain for the next six centuries—and they readied England to become a powerhouse on the world’s stage. The Anglo-Saxons left a remarkable legacy in the arts, law, and language, but our understanding of who the Anglo-Saxons were and how they became a united people has changed dramatically in recent years. By using texts, artifacts, and DNA evidence, Professor Paxton reconstructs their astonishing story and the world they built. The year 1066 is one of the most consequential turning points in world history, but it was only possible because of the story that came before, a story told in England: From the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest.