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|title=The Norman Conquest

|sort=Norman Conquest, The

|publisher=Windmill

|date=March 2013

|website=http://authorsplace.co.uk/marc-morris/

|summary=A full account of the Norman conquest, the background and power struggles that led up to it, and the aftermath. Although it focuses on the year 1066, the narrative covers most of the 11th century and beyond

}}

When did the Norman conquest of England start and end? This generous panoramic history takes a wide sweep of almost the whole of the eleventh century in England, although as the title indicates, the focal point is that pivotal date of 1066. Morris begins his narrative at around the year 1000, a time when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were under threat from the Viking invasions from Alfred and Ethelred the Unready. Having long been vulnerable to raids from Scandinavia, England then had to contend with the same from France. The power struggles that followed the illness and death of the childless Edward the Confessor (who had nominated William of Normandy as his preferred successor in 1051), the apparent seizure of the English throne by Harold Godwinson who then had himself crowned with remarkable haste, the invasion led by Harold’s brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada of Norway and the death of both the latter at Stamford Bridge, are dealt with in painstaking detail.