Prof Simon Keynes

Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (ret.)
Fellow of the British Academy

Fellow of Trinity College

Contact Information

Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ (01223-338421)
Department of ASNC
Faculty of English, 9 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DP
Office: S-R41, (+44-1223-335085), email: sdk13@cam.ac.uk

Academic Interests

Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history and culture; perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon past from the twelfth to the nineteenth century; the development of Anglo-Saxon studies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century (especially Sir Robert Cotton and other antiquaries, Humfrey Wanley, and John Mitchell Kemble); Scandinavian history in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

  • Executive Editor, Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge University Press)
  • Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE), funded by the AHRC
  • Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Charters (British Academy/Royal Historical Society), the associated 'Kemble' website, and the 'Electronic Sawyer' (funded by the AHRC)
  • Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles (British Academy)

Selected Publications

  • 'The "Canterbury Letter-Book": Alcuin and After', Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections, ed. C. Breay and J. Story (Dublin, 2021), 119–40
  • 'The emergence of a Kingdom of England', and 32 catalogue entries, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. C. Breay and J. Story (London, 2018) - catalogue of exhibition at the British Library
  • 'The Use of Seals in Anglo-Saxon England', Seals and Status: the Power of Objects, ed. J. Cherry, et al. (London, 2018), 73-83
  • 'Earl Harold and the Foundation of Waltham Holy Cross (1062)', Anglo-Norman Studies 39 (2017), 81-111
  • ‘Welsh Kings at Anglo-Saxon Royal Assemblies (928–55)’, Haskins Society Journal 26 (2015), pp. 69–122 [developed from Henry Loyn Memorial Lecture 2008]
  • ‘H. M. Chadwick and Anglo-Saxon England’, H. M. Chadwick and the Study of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge, ed. M. Lapidge, CMCS 69/70 (2015), pp. 111–41
  • ‘England and Spain during the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 20 (2015 for 2013–14), pp. 121–66
  • ‘King Æthelred the Unready and the Church of Rochester’, ‘Textus Roffensis’: Law, Language, and Libraries in Early Medieval England, ed. Bruce O’Brien and Barbara Bombi, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 30 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 315–62
  • ‘Alfred the Great and the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’, A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 13–46
  • ‘Mapping the Anglo-Saxon Past’, Towns and Topography: Essays in Memory of David H. Hill, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker and Susan B. Thompson (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014), pp. 147–70
  • ‘Church Councils, Royal Assemblies and Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas’, Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. G. G. Owen-Croker and B. W. Schneider (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 17–182
  • [with Rory Naismith] ‘The Agnus Dei Pennies of King Æthelred the Unready’, Anglo-Saxon England 40 (2012 for 2011), pp. 175–223
  • ‘The Burial of King Æthelred the Unready at St Paul’s’, The English and their Legacy 900–1200: Essays in Honour of Ann Williams, ed. David Roffe (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 129–48
  • ‘The Cult of King Edward the Martyr during the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds and Susan M. Johns (London, 2012), pp. 115–25
  • ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, I: c. 400–1100, ed. Richard Gameson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 537–52
  • ‘King Æthelred’s Charter for Eynsham Abbey (1005)’, Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter, Catherine Karkov, Janet L. Nelson and David Pelteret (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 451–73
  • ‘Edgar, rex admirabilis’, Edgar, King of the English 959–75: New Interpretations, ed. Donald Scragg, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 8 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), pp. 3–59
  • 'An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 1006–7 and 1009–12', Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), pp. 151–220
  • Anglo-Saxon England: a Bibliographical Handbook for Students of Anglo-Saxon History, 7th ed., ASNC Guides, Texts, and Studies 1 (Cambridge, 2006)
  • 'Ely Abbey 672–1109', A History of Ely Catherdral (2003), pp. 3–58
  • An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670-1066, I: Tables, ASNC Guides, Texts, and Studies 5 (Cambridge, 2002)
  • 'The Cult of King Alfred the Great', Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999), pp. 225-356
  • The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Don Scragg (Oxford, 1999), 2nd ed. (2014)
  • The 'Liber Vitae' of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 26 (Copenhagen, 1996)
  • Alfred the Great: Asser's 'Life of King Alfred' and Other Contemporary Sources (Penguin Classics, 1983)
  • The Diplomas of King Æthelred 'the Unready' 978-1016 (Cambridge, 1980)