There are times when current political debates seem to entwine in the most complex ways with art history. It is not surprising that the United Kingdom’s decision in 2016 to leave the European Union is one example, since it raises fundamental issues of national identity. Brexit’s shadow falls in surprising places, few less likely perhaps than over an artist who said that the depiction of shadows had no part in his work, Nicholas Hilliard. 

The British Library’s exhibition on Anglo-Saxon kingdoms is a triumph on two levels. Not only is it a magnificent display of early medieval masterpieces, but it also reclaims the intellectual high ground for the Anglo-Saxons at a time when the label ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is tainted by its use in some quarters as a byword for racial essentialism and when Britain finds itself in the midst of a debate over its future in Europe and the world.