The definitive biography of the famous English outlaw who rebelled against William the Conqueror



After the Norman victory in Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror's oppression of the English led to widespread famine, death and destruction, culminating in the brutal Harrying of the North and the deaths of 100,000 people. Did the English submit to the tyranny of their oppressors? Or was this to be the beginning of one man's fight for liberty? Returning from Flanders to find his country taken over by the Normans, Hereward, known traditionally (and erroneously) as 'the Wake', embarked on a path of resistance that was to start with the violent plundering of the monastery at Peterborough. Subsequently abandoned by the Danes he had relied upon, Hereward barricaded himself on the Isle of Ely. Holding out alone until reinforced by the arrival of Earls Edwin and Morcar from the North, Hereward found himself the object of William's personal hatred and his desire to stamp out the last remnants of English resistance. Peter Rex rescues Hereward from the myths associated with his life and career, and finally reveals the mystery of his parentage and baffling disappearance into the mists of the Fens...