St Edward the Confessor, King of the English, is commonly despised by historians; he was the last of his dynasty, and after his death his country was conquered by the foreigner. But that foreign conquest was exactly what St Edward had wished for. In this novel Alfred Duggan brings to life different customs, races and languages, as well as the violence and struggle for power between the Godwinssons and other great Earls - a Saxon England which seemed too large a country to unite except in dread of the Vikings.