Review: Julian Rathbone The Last English King (1997)

Probably the most memorable historical fiction I’ve ever read. ‘The last English King’ is Harold Godwinson, of course, but Rathbone tells the story of the Norman Conquest of England (in 1066AD, for our foreign readers) from the point of view of Walt, a simple member of King Harold’s personal bodyguard. Traumatised – as much by his failure to die protecting his king as by the loss of the battle and half an arm – Walt nevertheless manages to escape to Europe. There he falls in with a motley crew of outcasts and vagrants, and embarks upon a confused and unconsummated journey, more odyssey than pilgrimage, towards the Holy Land.

Walt’s story is brutal, tender, oddly erotic, often funny, slightly surreal and, ultimately, very angry. The brutality begins before the Norman invasion with the Godwinsons’ bored, pointless ‘harrowing’ of disobedient villagers, and continues with the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings. This violence is interleaved with Walt’s tender recollections of the wooing of his wife and now, on his journey, with the strange erotic healing of the damaged stump of his arm (p.193). But the brutality resurfaces when Walt returns to England, to his home village, to discover the charred bodies of his wife and son in his burnt-out hut. Rathbone is very angry that William the Bastard and a bunch of mercenary psychopaths should have been dignified by history as ‘William the Conqueror’ and ‘the Norman Invasion’.

Nonetheless, the story remains warm and wry and witty overall. One of the particular delights (for me, anyhow) is Rathbone’s deployment of the occasional ‘proleptic’ anachronism. That is to say, as he admits in a prefatory note on ‘Anachronisms and Historical Accuracy’, ‘Occasionally characters, and even the narrator, let slip quotations or near quotations of later writers or make oblique references to later times . . .. For reasons I find difficult to explain, it amuses me, and may amuse others . . .. But it also serves a more serious purpose . . . to remind readers, especially English readers, that it was out of all this that we came’ (p.viii).
In my favourite example, two of his companions discuss poor Walt (p.190):
‘He’s a mess. Traumatised –’
‘Eh?’
‘Word I made up. From the Germanic word for “wound” – applied here to wounds in the mind. Even before the battle . . . I doubt he was up to much. He fears the female orgasm . . .. Anglo-Saxon, you see. Attitudes. Attitudes to the female sex. See the conquering hero comes.’

Bliss. Actually, Julian, it’s from the Greek or late Latin . In German ‘Traum’ means ‘dream’. Are you teasing us? Even so, bliss. ( )

Rathbone's novel is a galloping case of where a novel wanted to go one way, but the author, having done his research, having lived and dreamed King Harold's downfall, being determined to show William the Conquering Bastard from a very different angle, was determined to Stick With the Plan. The problem is that Walt, Harold's devoted housecarl (personal bodyguard, elite warrior) from childhood, is a totally engaging character and the way the book is begun, leads the reader to expect that the story is very much about Walt. But it isn't, it is really about Harold, with Walt as a witness of what really happened at Hastings, and there are contrivances too, to have a person who can tell the story from William's "side". The contrivance, sadly, falls flat and makes the narrative about Harold just become a bit of a bore, especially in the last third of the book as events grind on to the conclusion we all know will come. Fiction can be treacherous this way, and it behooves a writer to listen to where his or her narrative really wants to go. I think he could have fulfilled his agenda, curbing it, but also giving us more of Walt, especially his future once home again. He has the aura of a true survivor. Another issue is the perennial one with historical fiction, and I'll have to read more about William and the Godwins to know how much Rathbone is making up, how much was hard research. I am guessing mostly it is hard research. Rathbone opts to have the men speak to each other informally, in our own vernacular, and also has a character with whom Walt travels for awhile, who perhaps is a bit too much, inventing words like 'psychopath' (to describe William!) and the like. But enjoyable all the same. Imperfect but worth reading for anyone interested in the feeling and basic facts of that time. The what-if is huge too -- how would England have developed if William had not won. Rathbone paints a rather idyllic society, perhaps a bit too idyllic but very appealing! ***1/2 ( )

The book rambles. The historical bits are fascinating but the fictional bits get in the way. I ended up skipping here and there to read the interesting bits. ( )

Walt was one of King Harold's housecarls who survived the death of his King. Bitterly ashamed, he wanders in search of redemption. He meets up with a Frisian in Constantinople and as they move on through Anatolia, Walt tells Quint his story of the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings and its grisly aftermath.

A great read, though it does go a bit overboard with its portrayal of Anglo-Saxon as an idyllic pastoral heaven and Normandy as a well organised hell. ( )

The central character of this novel is Walt who was a retainer to Harold, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England, before William the Conqueror won in 1066, who tells his story of living under Edward the Confessor's reign and the transition to Harold, during aimless travel across Europe and the Middle East. I found this rather rambling and unfocused, so it didn't really work for me at this point in time. ( )