The Song-Sayer’s Lament is set around the year we would now describe as 540 AD, in Sixth Century Dark Age Britain, and I wanted to mark the passage of time for my characters in a way that might be credible for the period in question. Why? Because, in truth, we have no idea how Britons, in the century after the Romans left our shores, calculated … [Read more...] about Sixth Century Britain – Festivals and Celebrations
Sixth Century Britain
My novel set Sixth Century post-Roman Britain, The Song-Sayer's Lament, inspired me to write a batch of blogs about this missing hundred years of Britain's history.
Sixth Century Britain – the Hill Fort Walks: Part One
The Song-Sayer’s Lament is my fifth novel, this one set in Sixth Century Britain and, since it’s always my habit to check out the locations I’ve used as settings, I recently began to walk some of the wild ground over which the story takes place. And, since that story starts in the ancient kingdom of Rhos, I began my journeys at the North Wales … [Read more...] about Sixth Century Britain – the Hill Fort Walks: Part One
Sixth Century Britain – King Arthur, really?
David Ebsworth's fifth novel set in Sixth Century Britain. A growing number of websites lay out for us a superficially impressive chronology of events and genealogies for the history of post-Roman Britain. But I will ask readers to disregard them. In truth, there are so few verifiable ‘facts’ for the two hundred years from 400 AD onwards that, … [Read more...] about Sixth Century Britain – King Arthur, really?