2025-03-17
1 小时 0 分钟Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History.
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go to therestishistory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com the Norman Conquest is the great turning point in the history of the English nation.
Since the first settlement of the English in Britain,
the introduction of Christianity is the only event which can compare with it in importance.
And there is this wide difference between the two.
The introduction of Christianity was an event which would hardly fail to happen sooner or later.
In accepting the Gospel,
the English only followed the same law which sooner or later affected all the Teutonic nations.
But the Norman Conquest is something which stands without a parallel in any other Teutonic land.
If that conquest be only looked on in its true light, it is impossible to exaggerate its importance.
And yet there is no event whose true nature has been more commonly and more utterly mistaken.
So that was Edward Augustus Freeman, who is the Regis professor of History at Oxford University.
And this is the opening of his gargantuan six volume History of the Norman Conquest,
which was commissioned to mark its 800th anniversary,
the 800th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
And it was published.
It took him 13 years to publish it, between 1867 and 1879.
And Tom, finally, in the Rest Is History, we come to the greatest narrative of English history.