William the conqueror

King William was a hard man, determined to use force to impose his will on the nation he had conquered. He was so successful at it, the Anglo-Saxons became second-class citizens in their own country.

The Normans were brutal, ruthless occupiers. The problem was that William had promised his allies and friends a cut of the cake, but first he had to hold on to England and consolidate his grip. This was done with a network of Norman castles right across the country, fighting platforms gouged into the landscape. From these the native population could be terrorised and intimidated, and any local risings snuffed out.

It would be easy to think that such racial antipathies were the simple product of prejudice born of ignorance, shaped by a complete lack of knowledge of each other's culture. But the reverse is true. For long before the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon England's relationship with continental Europe had been close. Over 200 years before, the common threat posed by the Vikings had brought the Carolingian kings of Francia and the kings of Wessex and Mercia together.