Wessex the ensuing Norman Conquest of England, and as the Norman kings soon did away with the great earldoms of the late Anglo-Saxon period, 1066 marks the extinction of Wessex as a political unit. From the second edition (1989) of the "Oxford English Dictionary": Wessex 1. The name of a kingdom in south-west England in Anglo-Saxon times, used by Thomas Hardy as the name of the county in which his stories are set (corresponding approximately to Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire) and since used as a name for south-west England or this part of it. Wessex is often symbolised by a
Alan Hunter (author) differs markedly from the books, being set in Northumberland and Durham rather than in Norfolk, and with different characters (other than the eponymous Gently). Alan Hunter (author) Alan Hunter (25 June 1922 – 26 February 2005) was an English author of crime fiction. All of his 46 novels feature Inspector George Gently and are mainly set in East Anglia. Initially a farmer, he became an antiquarian bookseller before writing his first novel. Hunter was born at Hoveton, Norfolk and went to school across the River Bure in Wroxham. He left school at 14 and worked on his father's farm near