Harold II

Book excerpt: Harold Godwinson was king of England for less than a year and failed to defend England from William the Conqueror's invading Norman army in 1066, an army that wreaked havoc across the country and changed the political history of England forever. Indeed, 1066 was so critical a turning point that it marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon epoch. Harold II: The Doomed Saxon King is the first full-scale biography of England's "lost king," an astute political operator who as Earl of Wessex won the affection of the English people, and the death-bed nomination from Edward the Confessor to succeed him. The Battle of Hasting was a close-run battle that could have gone either way—England would be a very different place today had the fatal arrow missed Harold's eye.