While on the subject of history

..Saxons and all that, I seem to remember about three weeks ago rather rashly saying I'd write a review of Cat Jarman's new book The Bone Chests.  Have no fear, I'm not really going to write a review but if you want one try this.  I will say this though: it's all about the now six (used to be ten, I believe) ancient wooden chests containing the bones of early medieval kings, one queen and several bishops, which currently sit high up around the edge of the presbytery in Winchester Cathedral (yes, I think I called it the chantry last time, but I was wrong).  The bones are now very jumbled, having escaped their boxes more than once and even been thrown through the stained glass west window of the Cathedral by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers.  However, a lot of osteo-archeology has been done on them in recent years and Cat Jarman has written her wonderful book.

What I liked most about the book is that without straining the rather meagre known facts about the Early Medieval era she has managed to make the characters sound like believable human beings - and is also very good at explaining the archeological processes.

So here is one of the bone chests.  It's the one she calls 'Number One'.  It allegedly holds the bones of the kings Cynegils (d. 643) and Aethelwulf (d. 858) but it's deeply uncertain who's really incarcerated within, and which bits belong to who (?whom).

If you like that period of history, or you just like mysteries, the book is well worth it ;))

Hope you're all safe from Ciaran.  Have a great evening.  xx