Ecfrith, thank you for raising that point about David Howarth's 1066, the Year of the Conquest. It's one of the best books I've ever read about the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings. The work is almost a tone poem about the year 1066—but not quite because he provides citations and sources for his assertions and explains how he reaches his conclusions. It's a scholarly work, yes, but eminently "readable." (And what good is the best scholarship if expressed in turgid and opaque prose?)

Howarth's comments on the evils of early "chivalry" clarified important points for me that had remained illusive (or "inchoate" to use the correct term). However, the part of the book that stays with me—haunts me really—is the comment Howarth made in his Introduction concerning the people involved in the Conquest:

But thinking about them as the kind of men and women one might meet and know, one begins to like some of them more than others; and why not? Personally, I think that if I had been around at the time I would have liked King Harold, heartily disliked King Edward the Confessor, felt sorry for Earl Tostig and terrified of Duke William, and found nothing whatsoever to say to King Harald Hardrada of Norway.

1066, the Year of the Conquest, Howarth, David. Penguin Books, 1981 at 9. (This book is readily available at Amazon in both new and used editions. It's an amazing work with interesting details and conclusions that appear to me to be sound.)