Speaker: Eleanor Parker

Topic: Children of the Norman Conquest

Venue: Ondaatje Lecture Theatre, Radcliffe Centre

Time: 14:00-15:00 Sunday 9 October

Talk Summary:

Eleanor Parkers offers a new perspective on the Norman Conquest by exploring the lives of the children who found themselves uprooted by the dramatic events of 1066. Among them were the offspring of Harold Godwineson and his brothers, survivors of a family shattered by violence who were led by their  grandmother Gytha to start again elsewhere. Then there were the last remaining heirs of the Anglo-Saxon royal line – Edgar Ætheling, Margaret, and Christina – who sought refuge in Scotland, where Margaret became a beloved queen and saint. Waltheof of Northumbria and Fenland hero Hereward took up arms against the Norman conquerors. Others, such as Eadmer of Canterbury, chose to influence history by recording their own memories of the pre-conquest world. These tales – some reinterpreted and retold over the centuries, others forgotten over time – are ones of endurance, adaptation and vulnerability, which reveal a generation of young people who bravely navigated a changing world and shaped the country England was to become.