The essays in this book are based on papers presented at the third G. L. Brook Symposium held at the University of Manchester in 1995. They show ways in which the history of the Anglo-Saxon period has been manipulated to satisfy the agendas of poets, dramatists and writers of imaginative prose works – even briefly by composers of film scripts and lyricists – ranging in date from a little over one hundred years after the Norman Conquest to the present day. Although there has been much scholarly interest in recent decades in the agendas of antiquarians, linguists, and political and ecclesiastical historians writing about this period, those of creative artists have been largely ignored. The subject is a topical one. It is notable that although nationalism is in vogue at the present time, evidenced by the break-up of eastern Europe, the conflict in former Yugoslavia, tribal antagonism in Africa and even devolution in the United Kingdom, the English today are very unclear about their own cultural identity and their history, as Tom Shippey's essay at the end of this book makes clear. It has not always been so, and the preceding essays examine some of the attitudes towards the first ‘English’ men and women in literary works of different periods and the cultural concepts that such attitudes embody. Literature in English is this book's primary target, although some essays refer to material in French or Latin to locate their subject's topics in an appropriate framework.