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‘Alfred’s Wars’ wins Medieval Military History Book of the Year

A book on Anglo-Saxon warfare, researched and written by Dr Ryan Lavelle, a lecturer at the University of Winchester, has won the prestigious Verbruggen Prize from the international society De Re Militari.

Alfred’s Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age by Dr Ryan Lavelle forms part of a larger Warfare in History series published by Boydell & Brewer. The book involved many years of detailed research looking at all aspects of warfare in the two centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest.

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De Re Militari is an academic association, representing professors and scholars who study medieval warfare. The annual Verbruggen Prize, named after Jans F. Verbruggen, one of the foremost scholars of medieval warfare, is presented to the best book on medieval military history published within the prior three years.

Head of the judging panel, Professor John France, who holds the Charles Boal Ewing Chair in History at the United States Military Academy, West Point, commented about Alfred’s Wars, “Written with admirable clarity, this work is a comprehensive, scholarly and brilliant analysis of both a complicated subject and the tangle of scholarly views which has come to entangle it.”

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Dr Lavelle is Programme Leader for the MA Regional and Local History and Archaeology at the University of Winchester. “I am delighted that Alfred’s Wars has been awarded the Verbruggen Prize”, he said. “Being based in Winchester is inspirational to my work on Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. The University has longstanding achievements in the important field of medieval history, and I feel honoured to add to these.”

This is the second accolade for Dr Lavelle’s book, which has just come out in paperback; last year Alfred’s Wars was selected by Choice review as one of its Outstanding Titles for 2011. The same year his book formed the basis of a feature and podcast for BBC History Magazine.

Click here to listen to the podcast episode from BBC History Magazine

Click here to visit the De Re Militari website

Click here to visit Ryan Lavelle’s website

Source: University of Winchester

 

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