David Woodman

David Woodman is a British historian specialising in early medieval England, particularly the period from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to the Norman Conquest. He is Professor of History at Robinson College, Cambridge, and his research concentrates especially on the tenth and eleventh centuries, kingship, documentary evidence and the formation of the English kingdom. Woodman is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries, and has held visiting research positions at institutions including Harvard, Columbia and Trinity College Dublin. His work combines close analysis of charters, chronicles and other medieval sources with an accessible approach to the political personalities and institutions of early England.

Woodman’s books include Edward the Confessor: The Sainted King, which reassesses the last major king of the House of Wessex and the political developments that led towards the Norman Conquest, and The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom, published in 2025. The latter examines Æthelstan’s conquests, government, religious patronage and European diplomacy and argues for his central importance in the emergence of a unified English kingdom in the tenth century. Woodman is also working on a biography of William the Conqueror and a broader history of England from Alfred the Great to William I, extending his study of how Anglo-Saxon political consolidation eventually gave way to Norman rule.