Welcome to the Dark Ages. Ken Follett returns to the site of his most popular historical series, Kingsbridge, in the southwest of England. Previously in THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH, Follet described how a medieval town lost its Gothic cathedral and a new one was built over generations. Now, a prequel shows us England of 997 CE, when a raid on a coastal town by the Vikings sends Edgar, a bereaved young boatbuilder, inland to a miserable hamlet.

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING is sometimes brutal and uses strong language of the day in context. The Welsh are not subdued – the Norman conquest wasn’t until 1066, and they had their work cut out to build defensive castles on the Welsh marches – so they raid towns and their young folks are carried off in reprisal slave raids by English armies. Edgar, his mother, and his brothers arrive in the hamlet of Dreng’s Ferry, halfway between the Welsh and the Vikings, hoping they can bring some peace and prosperity into their lives as farmers. But Edgar, the clever, talented boatbuilder, starts turning his hand to other kinds of building and improvisation, incurring the wrath of the ferryman by proposing a major bridge.  

Other colourful characters stride through the hamlet on their own business, including Ragna, a young Norman woman who sets her heart perhaps unwisely on a Saxon overlord visiting her home of Cherbourg, in the land that’s now France. She weds Wilwulf but soon discovers that her mother-in-law and Wilwulf’s brothers live in or near his home compound and they all plot and jostle for power despite the far-off king’s pronouncements.  

Aldred is a monk who loves the rare, beautiful books he manages to buy or copy for his abbey. He learns that the decrepit minster church of Dreng’s Ferry is run by priests who don’t keep the virtues, and his agitating brings him to the notice of a powerful enemy, Bishop Wynstan, who happens to be Wilwulf’s brother.

Through the plots and plights of these people, we learn incredible amounts about Saxon and Norman society. The landholdings and tithes were the main sources of wealth for the nobles and churches, and working peasants had no option but to pay whatever was due or be evicted. Women had little power and only slightly more influence, but the well-to-do were, in theory, ladies under the protection of their families or the king. I enjoyed seeing Ragna, even as a young princess, visit villagers, hear grievances and dispense justice in her father’s name.

Ken Follett has once more produced a tour de force; a story to echo through the ages with love, greed, corruption, and beauty in good measure. Most Dark Ages buildings were made of timber so not many have survived, but by this time people were benefiting from learning and generations of skills as the Middle Ages were about to begin. THE EVENING AND THE MORNING is a well-researched, epic tale and will answer all the questions you may have had about the origins of the fictional Kingsbridge and provide all the drama of the day. I was delighted. The flowing writing style is extremely hard to put down, so plan to read this historical thriller when you have a few days without interruption.  

Book Summary