Originally published on July 15, 2026 (Episode 466)
Introduction
Running for about 177 miles along the Welsh-English border is the remains of an earthwork, a fortification over a hundred miles longer than Hadrian’s Wall. Built sometime in the eighth century, it is known as Offa’s Dyke, one of the few surviving reminder of one of the most formidable kings in English history.
“As a man,” writes my guest Roy Naismith, “Offa is effectively lost.” Winston Churchill framed the issue thus: “In studying Offa we are like geologists who instead of finding a fossil find only the hollow shape in which a creature of unusual strength and size undoubtedly resided.” Or as the historian Kenneth Sisam observed, Offa “seems to have had all the attributes of a great ruler except a contemporary historian.”
But if he is effectively lost, then how can Naismith have written a new book titled Offa: King of the Mercians? Because he has, to paraphrase modern terminology, historyed it. This is a conversation about a great early medieval king; but it’s really a master class in the careful and demanding work of historical inference.
About the Guest
Rory Naismith is Professor of Early Medieval English History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. One of the leading historians of Anglo-Saxon England, his work combines political, economic, religious, and numismatic history to illuminate the early medieval world. His books include Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English Kingdoms, 757–865, Making Money in the Early Middle Ages, and Offa: King of the Mercians.
For Further Investigation
Rory Naismith, Offa: King of the Mercians (Yale, 2026)
—, Making Money in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, 2023)
—, Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English Kingdoms, 757–865 (Cambridge, 2011)
Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2023)
James Campbell (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons (Penguin, 1991)
—, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (Bloomsbury, 1986)
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, available in translations by Bertram Colgrave and D.H. Farmer; scholarly edition by Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (OUP, 1992)
Related Episodes
Venerable Bede: Rory Naismith on Britain’s First Great Historian
“Making Medieval Money”, with Rory Naismith
“Talking Anglo-Saxon”, with Rory Naismith
Tags
Anglo-Saxon England, Offa, Mercia, Rory Naismith, Early Medieval History, England, Kingship, Charlemagne, Coinage, Archaeology, Historical Method, History Podcast
