Re-Assessing the Foundations of the Anglo-Saxon Period – And Re-Setting the Tone of Debate

This review article examines How England Began: from Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons by Nicholas J Higham (225 mm. Pp viii+360, 32 pls. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2026. isbn 978-0-300-25492-1. £25.00 (hbk)), and its contribution to debates about the transition from Roman Britain to early Anglo-Saxon England. Through a close reading of Gildas’ De excidio Britanniae , Higham argues for the continued strength of British Christian identity while acknowledging a greater role for migration than earlier revisionist models allowed. While this more nuanced treatment of the evidence is to be welcomed, there remain questions about some of his demographic assumptions and the continued use of a supposed ‘Germanist’ historiographical tradition as a polemical target. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence suggests there is a need for more explicit demographic modelling that prioritises empirical, regionally focused and critically balanced interpretations of fifth- and sixth-century Britain.