British Battles 493–937

Senchus Blog -- Review

"This book offers a good overview of the extensive and sometimes conflicting scholarship on the thirteen conflicts, it presents Breeze’s own insights, based on previous articles and extensive research, and is thus a stimulating read irrespective of whether or not one agrees with Breeze’s conclusions. — Nicole Meier, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 258, no. 173 (2021)"

"A book that anyone with an interest in locating the lost battlefields of early medieval Britain will find enlightening and thought-provoking. It provides the reader a good measure of background information, while placing the author's own contribution in a broader context, as well as signposting additional resources and alternative theories. — Tim Clarkson, https://senchus.wordpress.com/2020/05/28/british-battles-493-937/, accessed 3 June, 2020"

‘Here Andrew Breeze combines his expertise in toponymy with a lively engagement in previous scholarship to locate early British battles, some involving – or not involving – King Arthur, others less familiar. His results cannot fail to set the archaeologists off in search of material evidence.’ —Brian Murdoch, Professor Emeritus, University of Stirling, UK

‘Andrew Breeze is a veteran scholar of early medieval British history, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the sources. He is also willing to make daring connections, to illuminate what were long thought of as the darkest of ages. Every page of this rewarding book offers fresh insights, and opens the way to new questions, new framings, of that story.’ —Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University, USA

‘Dr. Andrew Breeze, among the foremost of today’s place-name scholars, has written a lucid and learned series of studies providing rich insight into British onomastics and military history.’ —J. R. Hall, Professor of English Emeritus, University of Mississippi, USA

‘Andrew Breeze is a polymath and a pioneer. In British Battles 493–937, he uses his immense learning in Latin, Celtic and Germanic to reach brilliant solutions to longstanding historical problems. His book shows how the combination of onomastics, topography and textual criticism can transform our understanding of early medieval history and literature.’ —Leonard Neidorf, Professor of English, Nanjing University, China

There is much worthwhile analysis here, leading to conclusions that various specialists—historians, archaeologists, geographers, should pay attention to. — Stephen Morillo, Wabash College, The Medieval Review (2021)

This collection focuses on thirteen battles from an onomastic perspective. At the outset, Breeze suggests that the identifications might be used in three main ways. First, to acquire a better historical understanding of the battles. Second, to seek archaeological traces of the battles. Third, to offer an onomastic methodology for use in other instances. ‘This book is about war, and specifically about early battlefields in Britain’. Rather, it is about the etymology of names, the links between names and places, and the identification of the places at which battles occurred. — Thomas Pickles, Northern History.