THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS, 1066, is the best-known event in English history, and while Duke William of Normandy, the Conqueror, is almost as well known, King Harold, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings and the loser in this epic struggle, is little more than a name.

In this new, authoritative and revealing biography Piers Compton, already an established historical biographer, does much to redress the balance. From this account Harold emerges as the most popular and among the most able of the Anglo-Saxon rulers. As a strategist he was the superior of William and but for the indiscipline of his army might have won his last battle (with consequences the author hints at), as he had earlier campaigns.

During the reign of his predecessor, Edward the Confessor, Harold had conquered Wales, and only a few days before Hastings he had defended the King of Norway (who, like William, was trying to enforce his claim to the English throne) at the battle of Stamford Bridge, near York.

Mr. Compton sees Harold, the ruler, as liberal-minded and enlightened, an impartial administrator and a supporter of the Church. Had he lived he might have been a great king. But his death was the end, not only of a man, but of an era, for with the coming of the Normans, England finally moved into the Middle Ages. In his story of Harold, Mr. Compton illuminates one of the turning points of English history.