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
Roger Taylor (author) Roger Taylor (author) Roger Taylor is an English fiction and non-fiction author. He was born in Heywood, Lancashire, and now lives in the Wirral. He is a chartered civil and structural engineer, a pistol, rifle and shotgun shooter, aikido instructor/student, and an enthusiastic but inaccurate piano player. He is the author of thirteen epic fantasy novels and a book on martial arts philosophy. The first four books are collectively known as the Chronicles of Hawklan, the following seven are set in the same world following the events in the Chronicles, and the twelfth, 'The Return of the Sword', is the