David Bates

David Bates is a British medieval historian and one of the leading modern scholars of the Normans, the Norman Conquest and Anglo-Norman England. His research covers Britain and France from roughly the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, with particular emphasis on Normandy, kingship and the political consequences of the conquest of England in 1066. He taught at Cardiff and later held the Edwards Professorship of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow before serving as Director of the Institute of Historical Research from 2003 to 2008. He subsequently became Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia, where he is now Emeritus Professor. His scholarship is distinguished by extensive work in French archives, especially his use of Norman charters to reconstruct the political networks and institutions of the eleventh century.

Bates has written several major studies of Norman history, including Normandy Before 1066, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I, 1066–1087 and The Normans and Empire. His most substantial biography, William the Conqueror, places William's career within both Norman and English history, examining his rise as Duke of Normandy, the invasion of England, the Battle of Hastings and the difficult process of establishing Norman rule after 1066. Rather than presenting the conquest as an isolated English event, Bates stresses William's position within the politics of north-western Europe and the emergence of a cross-Channel Anglo-Norman realm. He has also co-authored a major study of the Bayeux Tapestry, reflecting his wider interest in the evidence through which the Norman Conquest and its participants have been interpreted.