If one wishes to learn about Anglo-Saxon history, Suffolk is a very good place to start. The archaeology of West Stow, of Sutton Hoo and of the urban origins of Gipeswic (Ipswich) are all fundamental to modern understandings of that period. Steven Plunkett offers a narrative of Suffolk affairs from the Anglo-Saxon migrations of the fifth century down to the onset of the Vikings and the overthrow of king Eadmund in 865-70. Suffolk, Norfolk and parts of Cambridgeshire were at that time not separate entities but collectively the territory of the Kingdom of the East Angles. It was not until the tenth century that the shires gained their separate existence. Suffolk took its shape from part of this older reality which Steven Plunkett explores and explains.