THE NORMAN CONQUEST was an important event in shaping the history of England and also the British Isles, but it is very distant in time. This raises two interesting questions. Firstly, what are the differences between memory of a recent event and memory of a distant event? The second and to my mind very important question is: can memory of an important but very distant event matter today? With regard to this second question, I am particularly interested in the potential impact of memory of a distant event, in our case the Norman Conquest, on intercultural relations, both international and intra-national. I will also offer some general concluding considerations on the significance of memory of the Conquest.

Distant Memory

I have abbreviated memory of a recent event and memory of a distant event to ‘recent memory’ and ‘distant memory. The definitions of ‘recent’ and ‘distant’ are of course not fixed. For ‘recent event’ from today's perspective I have in mind the twentieth century onwards; for our eleventh- and early twelfth-century chroniclers the Norman Conquest was a recent event. The definition of ‘distant’ is more difficult. One possibility would be to say that everything that is not recent is distant; another to say that distant implies a considerable time back in the past. The case studied here is in the second category from the perspective of the present time, since the event, the Norman Conquest, occurred more than 900 years ago.