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Head to Head

How Important was the Battle of Hastings?

The Norman Conquest is credited with reshaping England, but was 1066
really all that?

History Today | Published in History Today Volume 76 Issue 3 March
2026
Preparations before the Battle of Hastings, Chronique de Normandie,
c1400-15. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public Domain.

'It was the last time England was conquered by a foreign power'

Tom Licence is Professor of Medieval History at the University of
East Anglia

The idea that a battle might alter the course of history, though
first popularised in the 19th century, is not without foundation. For
as one writer remarked a generation after 1066, 'French customs then
took root through England and English affairs began to change in
various ways' (Herman the archdeacon, writing in the 1070s-90s).

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