The Ancient Capital: An Historian in Search of Winchester

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' “Winchester was once the capital of England. She was, as Hilaire Belloc has reminded us, ‘a capital city longer than London has been.’ And for Hampshire men--especially for those born no farther away than Romsey--she is the secret capital still.” So Hugh Ross Williamson starts this book on a city of which it can be truly said that those who do not know something of it cannot claim to know or understand England. The author, eminent alike as historian and dramatist, novelist and theologian, makes his starting-point the Winchester Pageant of forty-five years ago to which he was taken as a small boy and which for him was “an early vision of what history could mean.” In this book he has managed to communicate something of the fascination which Winchester still holds for him so that the visitor may share it and find the great men and women and events of the past evoked by the magnificent cathedral and other buildings and treasures which have survived into the present.' - flyleaf blurb I. The Hills. II. Arthur And Alfred. III. Emma—And Godbegot. IV. The Jews In Winchester. V. The Red King. VI. A Quest Continued. VII. King, Queen, Bishop, Knights, Castles. VIII. Santa Claus, The Trusty Servant And A Cautionary Tale. IX. Fourteenth Century Interlude. X. A Military Dispatch. XI. Three Chantries. XII. The Pillaged Shrine. XIII. Two Memorials. XIV. The City Cross. XV. The Oldest Almshouse In England. XVI. At St Cross. XVII. The Churches. XVIII. Fox And Gardiner. XIX. The Spanish Marriage. XX. The Anglican Bishops. XXI. The Library. XXII. Change And Decay. XXIII. The Great Trial At Winchester. XXIV. Oliver Cromwell. XXV. The King’s House. XXVI. The College. XXVII. The Catholic Cemetery. XXVIII. Alice Lisle. XXIX. The Fate Of The ‘King’s House’. XXX. In Search Of The Eighteenth Century. XXXI. And So Victoria. XXXII. The Cathedral. XXXIII. To-Day.