Over dinner on 14 October a friend challenged me: ‘You’re a history teacher. How come everyone knows about the Battle of Hastings? There must have been loads of battles. Why that one?’ The year 1066 had an iconic role in English historical thought long before Sellar and Yeatman immortalised it as one of the memorable dates of English history.1 In fact its status was quite deliberately conferred on it by the victorious Normans themselves, who knew full well that winning in the present might be easier with victories in the past to trumpet. The Conquest became known as a turning point in English history, the moment when England became a continental nation – an interpretation convenient for medieval and early modern monarchs with designs on various parts of France. Later Victorian historians – two in particular