The Normans were the original liberal metropolitan elite ‘Remainers’

Today is the most important date in our history, the day on which in 1066 thousands of men fought outside Hastings and England was changed forever. By the end of the day, 950 years ago, thousands were dead, among them England’s king, Harold II, and most of the country’s leaders.

As historian Elizabeth van Houts put it, ‘No other event in western European history of the central Middle Ages can be compared for its shocking effects: the carnage on the battlefield, the loss of life and the consequent political upheaval.’

In our minds the Normans have become sort of pre-eminent Hollywood upper-class English villains, blamed for long-standing class divisions in England. Norman ancestry is synonymous with elitism, so that French sounding names suggest privilege, while Anglo-Saxon ones appear humble. In the most popular British book and film series of recent years, the heroes have the very Anglo-Saxon sounding surnames Potter and Weasley, while the baddies go by the Normanesque Voldemort and Malfoy.