2006-02-20 England's most wanted

Professor Holt wrote what came to be acknowledged as the definitive work on Robin Hood in 1981, and it was published the following year. A second edition appeared in 1988, incorporating significant new research. So that's the first point to make; make sure you get the later edition. The second point is that this new evidence, which pushed the first reference to Robin Hood a century further back in time, merited a re-write. Instead, Holt leaves the main text almost unaltered and discusses the new information in a postscript, and gives it a brief mention in a preface. The result is that the reader is presented with much speculation about the origin of the legend which is invalidated in the postscript. It's rather like having the rug pulled from under your feet.

Nonetheless, the work remains a fact-packed, authoritative guide to England's unlikely national hero. (Well, a thief who may or may not have existed seems an unlikely hero to me). Holt points the reader toward the earliest ballads, and I strongly recommend that you read these in parallel with the earliest chapters of this book. The ballads are all readily available, in the original and translated, on the Net, and they are great fun.

Robin is as elusive as he is intriguing, but he is well worth tracking, and Holt is probably still the best guide.