The Mercian chronicles:
King Offa and the birth of the Anglo-Saxon state, AD 630-918
Max Adams
Punished 2025 Apollo/Head of Zeus
ISBN 978 1 838 93325 8
448 pages, hardback
24 × 15.8 × 3.9 cm
Reviewed for Volume 3 Issue 4 Autumn 2025
The Review
This book is like a three act novel. The rise, the golden age and the decline of Mercia covering 630 to 918CE this was a pivotal time in British history between the vacuum left by the Romans from about 400CE and consolidation of Athelstan’s (Wessex) England in 924CE.
Critics might note the first use of Mercia was around 585 but one mention does not a kingdom make. Adams does peer in the mist of the 40 years before the official 630 start date of the book in the introduction but it is more in passing. The author is a historian and an archaeologist who has written several books on first millennium Britain including one on the gap between the Romans and Mercia (the First Kingdom, Britain in the age of Arthur) for those who want to see the prequel. The problem is these lines are between ages can be fuzzy and the alternative would be to have a single book twice the size.
All Adams’ books are well researched, and more readable than some academic books. As mentioned he is both an archaeologist and a historian which in an age of more archaeology than written history is a good thing, especially as archaeology has moved on in leaps and bounds in the last few decades. This is important as the source documents tend to have been written several 100 years after the events.
The important parts of this book are the intangibles. We know of Offa’s Dyke but Adams looks at the more important things like the statesmanship and the politics. This tends to be forgotten even though it is as significant as the battles. Like the Church politics, the use of coins and other forms of soft power on many levels, things that lasted longer than the kingdom of Mercia. Even books on Athelstan look back to things and influences he used from Mercia. Though, some things came through Mercia, from the Romans, 400 years before.
Whilst the book ends at 918 the death of Aethelflaed, Mercia actually faded in power if not name or influence of ideas when King Aethelred became ill around 902 and Aethelflaed, sister of the King of Wessex and increasingly, his first son, Aethelstan, ran Mercia as a Wessex annex. As mentioned start and end dates are at best fuzzy.
Overall this is an essential and readable book with a lot of insight in to how Mercia worked and what its legacy was written by someone who understands the history from before to after and can put it in context. If you grab the prequel you have the entire picture from the Romans fading out to the start England. Looking at the dates of the two books 2021 and 2025 you can see they were written as a pair.
There is more information on the Authors Web site on this and his other books. Click Here.
