Where does the idea of England and Englishness come from? Can we see it beginning in the Dark and Middle Ages? Michael Wood tackles these fascinating questions in two ways. First, with a series of pieces on famous English myths. And secondly by looking at the history of half a dozen places in England: a farmhouse on Dartmoor, a battlefield in Sheffield, a medieval village near Leicester... By these means he describes the origins of a sense of Englishness, and how it has developed through the centuries. "The book triumphs... His England is both a real place and an invented community which has proved its worth" TLS