"A tour de force" - New York Times Book Review "Ambitious, finely detailed and compulsively readable" - Locus "It is a book that feels fundamentally true; it is a book to live in" - Washington Post For Kivrin Engle, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing a bullet-proof backstory. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours. Winner of both the 1993 Hugo and Nebula Best Novel awards, this is a science fiction classic. Read what everyone is saying about Doomsday Book: 'By the time I finished the book, I had the feeling I also spent time living with these medieval men, women and children. The novel is that powerful' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'I can't stop thinking about Doomsday Book. I can't get the images out of my head. I can't get the train of thought out of my head. I can't stop my throat from tightening or my jaw from clenching' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'I was fascinated by CW's take on time travel and the mirroring of the plague in the future with the past's Black Death, but moreover, the characters snuck up on me and tore my soul apart' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'A lovely and heart-wrenching story, highly recommended. It's much more about the characters than the hard science. Kivrin's - and the villagers' - bravery in the face of death and tragedy hit me right in the heart' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'This is the mostest bestest time travel novel ever written . . . Connie Willis is just too bloody good' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'The strengths of this novel are its attention to Historical details, the engaging and believable characters suitable to an era and the dark but hopeful tones and themes of the story' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'I read this book for the first time about six years ago and barely survived it, I was so involved in everything that was happening. Connie Willis is an amazing writer' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

A scholarly feast... a milestone in the history and historiography of medieval England. Its essays are without exception authoritative and well-written and it indicates not only the progress made in Domesday studies in the last hundred years but also the continuing significance of the pioneer work of the great Domesday scholars such as Maitland and Galbraith.' PROGRESS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY An enduring contribution to historical scholarship.' AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW name studies, palaeography and topography.

Domesday Book is the main source for an understanding of late Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. And yet, despite over two centuries of study, no consensus has emerged as to its purpose. David Roffe proposes a radically new interpretation of England's oldest and most precious public record. He argues that historians have signally failed to produce a satisfactory account of the source because they have conflated two essentially unrelated processes, the production of Domesday Book itself and the Domesday inquest from the records of which it was compiled. New dating evidence is adduced to demonstrate that Domesday Book cannot have been started much before 1088, and old sources are reassessed to suggest that it was compiled by Rannulf Flambard in the aftermath of the revolt against William Rufus in the same year. Domesday Book was a land register drawn up by one of the greatest (and most hated) medieval administrators for administrative purposes. The Domesday inquest, by contrast, was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085 and was an enterprise of a different order. Following the threat of invasion from Denmark in that year it addressed the deficiencies in the national system of taxation and defence, and its findings formed the basis for a renegotiation of assessment to the geld and knight service. This study provides novel insights into the inquest as a principal vehicle of communication between the crown and the free communities over which it exercised sovereignty, and will challenge received notions of kingship in the eleventh century and beyond.

This is an analysis of the Domesday Book from the perspective of a surveyor and valuer. Most of the logistical problems encountered by the Domesday surveyors are universal. The main aim of this work is to calculate a timetable for the creation of the Domesday survey. In order to do so, it is necessary to analyze the text and to use ‘reverse engineering’ to determine the survey’s purpose, what data was collected, the volume of it and how it was used. Clearly, the purpose was fiscal because the text and the format of the data are not usable as either a land register or an estate management terrier. The data captured are much more narrowly based than usually acknowledged. It is land-based and excludes the built environment. It is not a complete record of either the agricultural workforce or livestock numbers. Logistics indicate that the survey could not have been fully completed within the year of 1086. It is highly likely that substantial preparatory work had been done before the Christmas meeting in 1085. The final version in a single hand could not have been completed before King William’s death in September 1087. The Domesday survey was a revaluation of the hidage assessment system using the same underlying concept and the same administrative machinery, but updating the data and adding monetary values. Although the survey provided a sound cadastre, it was never used to collect tax directly. It was therefore a fiscal failure.

New light is shed on the motives and objectives for the compiling of the still-mysterious Domesday Book, revolutionising our understanding of the period.