The Year 1000
   Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger
  1999 Little, Brown & Co. Boston USA
   ISBN: 0316558400


In this new millennium it is fascinating to turn our minds back & discover how our forbearers lived ten centuries ago. Gleaned from a remarkable manuscript describing & illuminating the monthly chores, responsibilities & trials of English country life & produced in the writing studio of Canterbury Cathedral, circa 1020A.D.

This is a rare & earthy glimpse into the history of everyday life when our very existence really did depend upon the vagaries of the weather of each season & the labors of everybody. Taking the manuscript, penned & illustrated nearly a thousand years ago, entitled The Julius Work Calendar, these authors have added from their own storehouses of research into English history & composed a readable, absorbing wander down memory lane.

In this day & age when we unthinkingly saunter into huge indoor supermarkets to amble along aisles of produce - strawberries & lettuces in December; milks of every fat content, fresh-packed cheeses & fruit-filled yogurts; grains & beans from every corner of the globe, all cleaned & pre-packed; flours of every imaginable combination all milled & packed against infection; breads of all kinds all year round, uninfected & clean; meats - regardless of the time of year, pre-cut, ground & pre-seasoned in separate portioned containers & fish - whole & laying upon ice, speaking of which: remember too, the aisles of frozen foods of all kinds. It does us well to think, to realize how far the last 1000 years has brought us.

Remember there were times in the rotation of our years when bread was unavailable - our flour had run out or rotted; there were times when we waited for the first green vegetables to produce leaves so we could get some relief from winter withered potatoes, carrots & apples. When our meats were higher than kites, our salt had run out & our jars of precious spices empty.

This is a special read! Not only a translation from the written words of a millennium past, it is also an interpretation of what was meant in the monthly calendar of that time. Robert Lacy & Danny Danzinger have woven a bright & beautiful little book.

As an “outsider” in the realm of England, which means we were recent immigrants to that island's shores, we had none of the handed-down history, however, my mother discovered & purchased an ill-used little cottage on the edge of the Sussex fens, hardby a windmill. Both are listed in the Normans' 1086 Domesday inventory, so in part, the landscape of this book is familiar to me

I remember eating week-old bread, dunking it in my cup of tea to soften it up. Sliced bread hadn't come along yet. I remember our first refrigerator too! Up until then we&d had a larder - a cupboard in the corner of our kitchen with screened air vents in the outside wall - perfect in fall, winter & spring, useless in summer.

The joy of this book is in the details Lacey & Danzinger have woven together:- when writing about bread they enlighten us about wheat, rye & barley, tossing in a delightful piece of gossip about Saints & Emperors. History coming to life in the day-to-day tasks, conversations & interplays of classes & religion; laborers & scribes; squires & kings; peasants & artisans.

Lacy & Danziger&s The Year 1000 is a luminous reminder of how much our lives used to be in tune to the seasons & just how much we&ve lost & won!

More from Robert Lacey: Robert, Earl of Essex; The Life and Times of Henry VIII; The Queens of the North Atlantic; Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor; Aristocrats; Ford: The Men and the Machine; Little Man; Sotheby&s - Bidding for Class & more.

More from Danny Danziger:
The Happiness Book; All in a Day&s Work; The Noble Tradition; Lost Hearts; The Orchestra & more.
(05/21/00)

Rebecca