The First Kingdom cover art

The First Kingdom

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The First Kingdom

By: Max Adams
Narrated by: Kris Dyer
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

About this listen

The best-selling author of The King in the North turns his attention to the obscure era of British history known as 'the age of Arthur'.

Somewhere in the dim void between the departure from Britain of the Roman legions at the start of the fifth century and the days of the venerable Bede, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what?

Max Adams scrutinises the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chronicles, stripping away the most lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesising the research of the last 40 years to tease out strands of reality from myth.

His central theme evolves from an apparently simple question: how, after the end of the Roman state, were people taxed? Rejecting ethnic and nationalist explanations for the emergence of the Early Medieval kingdoms, Adams shows how careful use of a wide range of perspectives, from anthropology to geography, can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.

©2021 Max Adams (P)2021 W F Howes Europe Great Britain Middle Ages Royalty Imperialism
All stars
Most relevant
Great book ruined by the terrible narrator. No research whatsoever into how to pronounce current Gaelic/Welsh words, let alone OE words. Disappointed.

Pronunciation

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In contrast to others on this site I did not find the performance monotonous. It was fine.

Not monotonous

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Max Adams has prepared for the reader an historical view of an era fogged with legend and wishful thinking. We are given an insight into Britain as a living entity in keeping with those times, covering many aspects of a land still living with the echoes of a long occupation.
Whereas conventionally studies are often drawn to the one character of Arthur real, possible or fictional, this work concentrates on the various tribes, their regions and cultures within the post-roman, pre-saxon era.
Naturally a work on this length and scope will tend to the academic, but is worth the investment in time and attention.

Turning to the narration. There is nothing wrong with this. The performance is delivered in a clear and steady manner, ideally suited to an academic work. Having an audio collection of some 200 works, factual and fiction, my advice is to concentrate on the subject matter and not nit-pick about delivery. Why when there is a preview, and a small number of reviews critical of the narration others then chose the book simply take offense at the narration is a mystery to me.

Comprehensive Assessment of the Arthurian Era

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Always love Max Adams books. As a professional archaeologist, his books are still a surprising and educational synthesis for me. I would recommend reading any of his books, especially this one, however this is the first I have got as an audiobook and this narrator is awful. I was under the impression that narrators were voice artists, but this person can't act, can't add the right emphasis and speaks with a flat nasal tone throughout. I'm not sure what the word is for the opposite of gravitas, but this is it.

Great book, terrible narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I wanted to get into this book more than I did. Perhaps that was because it is looking at the whole of the uk and Ireland which during that period were separated into many different countries and lordships which changed often. This the narrative has to jump from one place and people group to another.

This goes into interesting details, but moves through centuries quickly enough to cover a lot of history in one tome.

A fascinating period of history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews