Somewhere in the dim void between the end of the Western Roman empire and the days of Bede, in that period known as the Age of Arthur, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what?

These are the enduring questions that exercise historians and archaeologists. In The First Kingdom Max Adams scrutinizes the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chroniclers. He strips away the more lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesizes the research that has been going on over the last forty years to tease out the strands of reality from the myth. He will reveal how archaeology has delivered evidence of invasion and settlement; of active material and intellectual trade between the Atlantic islands and the rest of Europe; of the environmental context of those centuries. And how geography has shown how retrogressive analysis can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.