Though The Battle of Hastings is well known, what happened next is something usually ignored. Paul Kingsnorth’s Man Booker Prize longlisted novel takes the historical fact about the forgotten war of resistance against the Normans that sprouted up after the battle to create a story of a man of the Lincolnshire fens facing up against the conquest. The Wake is unique in its use of what Kingsnorth describes as a “shadow tongue” – a version of Old English adapted to be understandable by modern readers.