October 14

[ColinL]

Happy Hastings Day.

Hope the festivities over the weekend are fun for all.
Here's one in the eye

and many have immigrated since the Normans came across without a single passport!

Best wishes

[Derek Jempson]

Without the Norman invasion, the UK would be a very different place today. I wonder if we would be doing this, and using the same language?

[Richard]

Our language must be the richer for it, regardless of whether you think the Norman Invasion was overall a good or bad thing.
Prior to the 'Invasion' we had been dominated by invasions from Scandinavian, Norway and Denmark in the form of the notorious Vikings.
We probably all remember King Canute - the Viking Conqueror (Scandinavian)
After the 'Invasion' we were very strongly cemented to Europe and especially France, despite the fact that the Normans in France were really just an offshoot of Vikings who had settled there.
History is extremely complex and the marriages betwixt and between the Normans and Vikings and the French proper suggest many more connections than differences.
The Kings of England married French Queens and gained lands there and vice-versa and basically we were able to prosper through a stimulus of those Vikings who had settled in France and Europe, which was a very different world altogether in times so distant past.

[ColinL]

For a humorous good read try Stephen Clarke's "A Thousand years of Annoying the French".

It is a long book but worth every page.