The Year 1000 is a vivid and surprising portrait of life in England a thousand years ago - a world that already knew brain surgeons and property developers and, yes, even the occasional gossip columnist. Uncovering such wonderfully unexpected details, authors Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger bring this distant world closer than it has ever been before. How did people survive without sugar? How did monks communicate if they were not allowed to speak? Why was July called "the hungry month"? The Year 1000 answers these questions and reveals such secrets as the recipe for a medieval form of Viagra and a hallucinogenic treat called "crazy bread." In the spirit of modern investigative journalism, Lacey and Danziger interviewed the top historians and archaeologists. Research led them to an ancient and little-known document of the period, the Julius Work Calendar, a sharply observed guide that takes us back in time to a charming and very human world of kings and revelers, saints and slave laborers, lingering paganism and profound Christian faith.
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From Amazon
"August was the month when flies started to become a problem, buzzing round the dung heaps in the corner of every farmyard and hovering over the open cesspits of human refuse that were located outside every house."
Although daily dangers were many, housing uncomfortable, and the dominant smells unpleasant indeed, life in England at the turn of the previous millennium was not at all bad, write journalists Lacey and Danziger. "If you were to meet an Englishman in the year 1000," they continue, "the first thing that would strike you would be how tall he was--very much the size of anyone alive today." The Anglo-Saxons were not only tall, but also generally well fed and healthy, more so than many Britons only a few generations ago. Writing in a breezy, often humorous style, Lacey and Danziger draw on the medieval Julius Work Calendar, a document detailing everyday life around A.D. 1000, to reconstruct the spirit and reality of the era. Light though their touch is, they've done their homework, and they take the reader on a well-documented and enjoyable month-by-month tour through a single year, touching on such matters as religious belief, superstition, medicine, cuisine, agriculture, and politics, as well as contemporary ideas of the self and society. Readers should find the authors' discussions of famine and plague a refreshing break from present-day millennial worries, and a very stimulating introduction to medieval English history. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
Offering a delightful, often astonishing portrait of everyday life in Anglo-Saxon England in the year 1000, this wonderfully earthy chronicle, while timed for the end of this millennium, distinguishes itself from the sea of millennial titles by focusing on the end of the last one. Lacey (Sotheby's?Bidding for Class), a popular British historian, and London-based journalist Danziger (The Orchestra) focus on aspects of daily living. The Anglo-Saxons, a practical, self-contained, fervently superstitious people, were 99% illiterate, yet their language would become their most widespread legacy. Bristol was a slave-trading port, and the use of "bondservants" was a basic underpinning of the rural economy (the Norman invasion of 1066 would replace servitude with feudalism). There was no sugar, but honey was so valued that it became a form of currency. Personal hygiene was almost nonexistent, and most adults died in their 40s. Engla-lond, as the country was called, endured the best and the worst of times, enjoying unmatched prosperity but also falling prey to Viking raids, a menace that King Ethelred (the Unready) exacerbated by paying protection money. The narrative is organized in 12 chapters?one for each month?plus a closing chapter assessing the Anglo-Saxon legacy. Prefacing each chapter is a nimble, remarkably modern-looking, secular drawing of laborers' activities reproduced from the Julius Work Calendar, probably created by a cleric working in Canterbury Cathedral around 1020. This is a superb time capsule, and the authors distill a wealth of historical information into brightly entertaining reading. Agent, Curtis Brown.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
By PTT001
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a great little read about life in England a thousand years ago. The investigation is thorough and produces some new and interesting observations about the lives of our ancestors. Many of the stereotypes we have about this time and place are challenged by this refreshing perspective.
By Melvin Scott
Format:Paperback
This book is more suited for those who do not read much history. Otherwise, there is not very much information that can be considered a revelation, and the actual content itself is a bit on the light side. The book is a good example as to why history should be written about events or people, because dates by themselves mean very little. I found the book rather dull.
Format:Paperback
The turn of the millennium (the last millennium, that is) in England was an interesting world to behold -- the country was struggling toward unity, but still wary of invaders from across the various seas (an invasion trend that would stop less than 100 years after the turn of the millennium). The typical Englishman was well-fed, but the kinds of food might astound modern readers; when the people got indigestion back then, medical treatments were even more bizarre.
Into the world, Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger venture with humour and insight. Lacey and Danziger, established writers in related topics, have traced a journey through history by tracing the typical life during a year at the turn of the year 1000, through the Julius Work Calendar, on reserve at the British Library, lost for a time due to miscategorisation. The authors (Lacey and Danziger) makes use of this interesting framework of month-by-month chronicling to develop the details of daily life and work in England in the year 1000.
The different months take the paradigm for different topics -- February looks at geography; August looks at medicine (and the frequency of flies); November looks at the issues of gender relationships. Among the fascinating facts that come out in the analysis are the kinds of cyclical patterns that occur in history --Lacey and Danziger point out that under Canute, an unfaithful wife would meet with a horrible fate, but that legislation died with him, until the Commonwealth period several hundred years later, when it would be revived.
The authors do not stick exclusively to English shores -- they discuss the general world situation, as it would impact English development. Lacey and Danziger close the year and discussion with the figure of Gerbert, who would become pope Sylvester II, having been the scholar of note under the Ottos, successors of Charlemagne. His strange innovations, like prefering Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) to Roman numerals, introducing 'exotic' machines like an abacus to the world made him suspect -- however, Lacey and Danziger refer to him as the first millennium's Bill Gates, revolutionising computational power for good and forever.
Lacey and Danziger warn against the 'snobbery of chronology', as C.S. Lewis terms it -- we don't necessarily know better or live better than our ancestors, and sometimes our distorted views of the past much be called into check. For example, it is commonly held that people today are taller than people in the past; while this trend is true over the past several generations, prior to that, it is not true -- the average Englishman today is only slightly taller than the average Englishman of the year 1000.
From riddles and games for a dark and stormy night (playing cards would not be invented for several hundred years) to the origins of serfdom and family life, this is a wonderful telling of history with fact, fiction, literature, politics and more rolled into a common thread.
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4.1 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
He remains an Englishman...
The turn of the millennium (the last millennium, that is) in England was an interesting world to behold -- the country was struggling toward unity, but still wary of invaders from... Read more
Published on Mar 21 2006 by FrKurt Messick
5.0 out of 5 stars
He remains an Englishman...
The turn of the millennium (the last millennium, that is) in England was an interesting world to behold -- the country was struggling toward unity, but still wary of invaders from... Read more
Published on Jun 18 2004 by FrKurt Messick
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reminds us that there was life in England before 1066
The major purpose of this book is to illustrate and focus on what life was like in Anglo-Saxon England around the year 1000. Read more
Published on May 16 2003 by Marc Comtois
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Honest and Worthy Book
Even if this book was simply an attempt to cash in on the turn of the millenium a couple of years ago, it is nevertheless a fascinating and well written piece of popular history. Read more
Published on May 13 2002 by A reader in Michigan
5.0 out of 5 stars
A terrific idea that is well executed
I admit that I was a little suspicious of Robert Lacey after his particularly staid books on the royal family. In this book, however, he is bright, susprising and inventive. Read more
Published on April 19 2002 by Kevin Brianton
4.0 out of 5 stars
I Need my Coffee in the Morning
Gross, that is what I think of how people lived back then, it would be like you are on the longest camping trip ever except only I set of clothes, no sleeping bag or tent and no... Read more
Published on April 16 2002 by John G. Hilliard
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating book of life at the first millenium
As a device the authors have chosen the Julius Work Calendar, a manuscript from around 1000AD, to illustrate a typical year at the turn of the first millenium. Read more
Published on Aug 27 2001 by Old Fisherman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Full of surprises
How often do we lump the year 1000 into "back then" without being able to distinguish it from 800 or 1300? Read more
Published on July 5 2001 by C.M.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting
I had just been to England for 3 weeks of independent touring when I got this little tome. It was a great read and helped me understand England a little better. Read more
Published on Jun 18 2001 by "jacko97"
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful
A brief account of what life was like around the year 1000 CE. While brief, the major topics were covered - the politics, economics, social and lifestule issues, and... Read more
Published on April 17 2001 by Robertomelbourne
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