Higham offers a fresh approach to how we should engage with this great work of history. Higham shows, through a close reading of the text, what light the Ecclesiastical History throws on the history of the period and especially on those characters from seventh- and early eighth-century England whom Bede either heroized, such as his own bishop, Acca, and kings Oswald and Edwin, or villainized, most obviously the British king Cædwalla but also Oswiu, Oswald's brother.
Bede wrote for his contemporaries, not for a later audience, and it is only by an examination of the work itself that we can assess how best to approach it as a historical source. Without it, we would be able to say very little about the conversion of the English to Christianity, or the nature of England before the Viking Age.
Bede's Ecclesiastical History is the most important single source for early medieval English history.
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