title: The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction
author:  John Blair 
description: <br />John Blair is Fellow and Prelector in Modern History, The Queen's College, Oxford. His publications include <em>Early Medieval Surrey</em> (1991), <em>Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire</em> (1994), <em>Ministers and Parish Churches</em> (1988), <em>English Medieval Industries</em> (1991), <em>The Cloister and the World</em> (1996), and <em>The Church in</em> <em>Anglo-Saxon Society</em> (forthcoming).<br />
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  # The Good Soldier
  
  
  ## Ford Madox Ford
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### PART I
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the
  
  
  Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme
  
  
  intimacy--or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet
  
  
  as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain
  
  
  and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet,
  
  
  in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe,
  
  
  a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today,
  
  
  when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew
  
  
  nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and,
  
  
  certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had
  
  
  known the shallows.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  I don't mean to say that we were not acquainted with many English
  
  
  people. Living, as we perforce 