I AM TODAY [RE]MINDED BY ....

[Michael Grove]

  ... the shenanigans of those members of both Houses of Parliament •

  who desperately seek for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern 

  Ireland to remain members of the so-called European Union • that none of

  them or their cohorts of course, have anything in common with those that

  can claim allegiance to The Curious Case of [BE]ing British; because they

  have only the Church of Rome and the Treaty of Rome running through

  their blood streams.    

  As Professor Robert Bartlett so superbly and succinctly proposed in his

  BBC Series The Normans • those Viking mercenaries  who fought for

  and protected the King of France, who couldn't pay them in Gold so gave

  them "all of the land between the rivers and the sea ", which became known

  as the Province of Normandy, the land of the Norse Man, with a promise

  that the Normans would convert to the Christianity of the Church of Rome  

  and subsequently further land to the west, to encompass all that is now

  regarded as Normandy today; as apposed to the Danish Vikings who

  eventually settled & intermarried with the peoples of the North of England,

  the very Yorkshire people whose blood runs through my own veins • "IT

  was of course "William the bastard", who would later go down in history

  as both William the Conqueror Duke of Normandy and King of England

  and he who established Ireland as THE crucible of a NEW COLONIALIST 

  MENTALITY". 

    HE in fact who could be rightly and indisputably

     described as having been born and died a bastard 

   Having conquered that large and powerful Kingdom of Britain that lay

  across the sea, following the Battle of Hastings, which catapulted King

  William to the very centre of European Power, he then decided to calculate

  how much wealth he had accrued by means of the census survey-data 

  which had been collected and written down, in a book which has now

  become known by the name Domesday, which provides us with a unique

  insight into the Anglo-Norman World. 

  [An event which was 900 years later celebrated by the BBC Domesday

  Project which was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips,

  Logica and the BBC.]

  AS a result of which King and Family owned 20% of the wealth of England,

  25% accrued to the Church of Rome, 50% to the newly appointed Normans

  Barons and 5% to the old English Barons, leaving the peoples of Britain

  to survive on their day to day activities to keep life and limb together. 

.

  

[Michael Grove]

The story of William the Conqueror begins at the Château de Falaise, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Caen in Calvados, Normandy. Born in Falaise either in 1027 or 1028, ‘William the Bastard’ as he was known to his contemporaries, was the illegitimate son of Robert I, aka Robert the Magnificent. The Dukedom of Normandy, created in 911 by Rollo the Viking, was by William’s birth, a powerful force in northern France.

William grew up in Falaise Castle, one of the main residences of the Dukes. It stood high above the surrounding rolling countryside on a hilltop or 'falaise', a force to be reckoned. Here was the source of power, leadership and might. 

Falaise Castle still stands high above the small town. Once a huge collection of buildings resembling a small town, today it consists of long defensive walls, the Talbot Tower built in 1207, the lower keep built around 1150 and the Great Square Keep built in 1123 by Henry, William’s son. It was modeled on the Tower of London that William began constructing in 1067, which was the perfect medieval fortress.

The castle saw prosperous times and disasters; intermittent fighting in the interminable Hundred Years War between the English and the French from 1337-1453, and again in August 1944 when bombing raids obliterated 80% of Falaise and much of the surviving castle during the final battle of Normandy.

.

[Michael Grove]

Men from the North • in the first episode of this exciting three-part series, which is unfortunately no longer available, Professor Robert Bartlett explores how the Normans developed from a band of marauding Vikings into the formidable warriors who conquered England in 1066. He tells how the Normans established their new province of Normandy -'land of the northmen' - in northern France. They went on to build some of the finest churches in Europe and  turned into an unstoppable force of Christian knights and warriors, whose legacy is all around us to this day. Under the leadership of   Duke William, the Normans expanded into the neighbouring provinces of northern France. But William's greatest achievement was the conquest of England in 1066. 

.
The Battle of Hastings marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and monarchy. The culture and politics of England   would now be transformed by the Normans.

[Michael Grove]

Conquest

In the second of this three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Norman conquest of Britain and Ireland. Bartlett shows how William the Conqueror imposed a new aristocracy, savagely cut down opposition and built scores of castles and

cathedrals to intimidate and control. He also commissioned the Domesday Book, the greatest national survey of England that had ever been attempted. England adapted to its new masters and both the language and culture were transformed as the Normans and the English intermarried. Bartlett shows how the political and cultural landscape of

Scotland, Wales and Ireland were also forged by the Normans and argues that the Normans created the blueprint for colonialism in the modern world.

[Michael Grove]

Normans of the South

Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Normans on southern Europe and

the Middle East. The Normans spread south in the 11th century, winning control of

southern Italy and the island of Sicily. There they created their most prosperous kingdom,

where Christianity and Islam co-existed in relative harmony and mutual tolerance.  

It became a great centre of medieval culture and learning. But events in the Middle East

provoked the more aggressive side of the Norman character. In 1095, the Normans

enthusiastically answered the Pope's call for holy war against Islam and joined the

first crusade. They lay siege to Jerusalem and eventually helped win back the holy city

from the muslims. This bloody conquest left a deep rift between Christianity and

Islam which is still being felt to this day.