Anglo-Saxon Thegn AD 449-1066 (Warrior)

This title examines the gear, tactics, training, and lifestyle of the elite warrior of the ancient and early medieval Saxon armies-the thegn. This book has the same author and illustrator as the Viking Hersir title, and resembles that book greatly.

As with all of the Osprey books, I find the combination of hard fact and imaginative reconstruction drawings very helpful. This Osprey is especially useful in conjunction with two other Osprey Warrior volumes that cover other military men of the period, namely, Norman Knight and Viking Hersir.

This title served well my research on the historical origins of the Arthurian myths. This title focused on the main enemies of Arthur in the fifth century, but it also covered later periods up to just before the Norman conquest.

What I like about the Osprey military books is how they provide a good ballace of text and illustration. This conveys information in a way which is both efficient and entertaining. This is far preferable to books which offer plenty of text but lack sufficient illustrations to show what the text is talking about; it is also far preferable to books which contain plenty of illustrations but lack sufficient text to explain them. My only complaint is that the photographs of manuscript illustations and archaeological artifacts are printed in black & white, so the reader misses much of the spectacular color and detail of this wonderful Anglo-Saxon art. Of course, printing everything in color will make a book more expensive, but it still may be worth doing. The great thing about all the Opsprey titles, though, is that each has a section in the middle made up of beautiful full color illustrations which portray the appearance and activities of the troops under study.