Radio Times: Review by:; David Butcher

There’s a nice moment in Michael Wood’s piecemeal history when we see one of the first attempts at writing an English code of law: around AD 600 King Aethelberht of Kent set up a tariff of compensation for injuries, which said that if you cut off someone’s ear, you owed them 12 shillings, six shillings for each front tooth you knocked out, and so on. Interestingly fingers, at four shillings each, were considered less valuable than teeth.

Wood throws up titbits like this all the time, as he potters through the complexities of tribes and invasions in the early Middle Ages. The gist of this episode is how the British (aka the Welsh) came to terms first with Anglo-Saxon incomers, and then with something worse – the Vikings.

About this programme

2/8. Michael Wood continues his history of Britain, exploring how the nations' individual identities emerged following the Dark Ages. He travels to Old Deer in Aberdeenshire, Dalriada kingdom in Co Antrim and Sedgefield in Norfolk, where community projects are helping the locals find a few clues to their past. He also recounts the arrival of the Vikings, and the impact made by the Norse invaders, with people from Ireland, the Wirral, Govan and York.