Staff Profile

Max is the author of fourteen books, the writer and presenter of several documentary films and a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow in SELLL (2010-2013).

He began his career as an archaeologist,excavating widely and publishing many papers and monographs. He later became a broadcaster and woodsman and began to travel more widely for writing. He has written biography and group biography, several histories of Early Medieval Britain and a number of books on trees and woodlands. His debut novel The Ambulist was published in 2016.

Max has taught creative writing to undergraduates, graduates, lifelong learners and primary school pupils.

He was a Churchill Fellow in 2003; has won an Elizabeth Longford Award and a Roger Deakin award for research. The Firebringers (2009) was a Guardian Book of the Week, and Max has been widely reviewed in The Times, TLS, LRB, and elsewhere. The King in the North and The Wisdom of Trees were both bestsellers.

Max continues to manage woodlands and plant trees, to travel and, increasingly, illustrate his work with his own photographs and maps.

He remains a Visiting Fellow in the School of History Classics and Archaeology. He has given research seminars at many universities, including York, Durham, London, Ohio State, Cardiff, Southampton, Sheffield and Bradford.

For news, and for samples of my writing, visit my website www.theambulist.co.uk

Max is currently finalising the text for a new history of Early Medieval Mercia - the kingdom of Offa. He is also writing a book on a series of ten one-hundred miles walks exploring the relationship between England at the time of Domesday Book (1086), and England now. With Colm O'Brien he is writing a new history of Early Medieval Northumbria.

Books

Adams, M. 2005a Admiral Collingwood: Nelson’s own hero. Weidenfeld and Nicholson

Adams, M. 2005b Collingwood: Northumberland’s Heart of Oak. Tyne Bridge Publishing

Adams, M. 2010 The Prometheans: John Martin and the generation that stole the future. London, Quercus Paperback.

Adams, M. 2013 The King in the North: the life and times of Oswald Whiteblade. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2014 The wisdom of trees. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2015 In the Land of Giants. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2016 The Ambulist. Durham: beat&track

Adams, M. 2017 Ælfred’s Britain: War and Peace in the Viking Age. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2018 Unquiet Women: from the Dusk of the Roman Empire to the Dawn of the Enlightenment. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2019 The Little Book of Planting Trees. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2019 Trees of Life. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2021 The First Kingdom 400-600. London: Head of Zeus

Adams, M. 2022 The Museum of the Wood Age. London: Head of Zeus

Papers

Adams, M. and Reeve, J. 1987 Excavations at Christ Church, Spitalfields 1984-1986. Antiquity 61:247-56

Adams, M. and Reeve, J. 1989 It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it: the archaeological context in palaeopathological study. In Roberts, C.A., Lee, F. and Bintliff, J. (Eds) Burial archaeology: current research, methods and developments. BAR British Series 211:267-273

Adams, M. 1991 A logic of archaeological inference. Journal of Theoretical Archaeology 2:1-11

Adams, M. 1992a Darwin’s worms: a review. The Field Archaeologist 18:1-4

Adams, M. 1992b Stratigraphy after Harris: some questions. In Steane, K. (Ed) Interpretation of stratigraphy: a review of the art, 13-16 City of Lincoln Archaeology Unit

Reeve, J and Adams, M. 1993 The Spitalfields Project: The excavations. Council for British Archaeology Research Report 84

Adams, M. and Brooke, C. 1995 Unmanaging the past: truth, data and the human being. Norwegian Archaeological Review 28, 2: 93-104.

Adams, M. and Haselgrove, C.C. 1995 Excavations at Port Seton East, East Lothian. Universities of Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne, Archaeological Reports 19, 46-51

Adams, M. 1996a Iron Age rig and furrow? So it seems. British Archaeology 13, 6. Council for British Archaeology

Adams, M. 1996b Excavation of a pre-Conquest cemetery at Addingham, West Yorkshire. Medieval Archaeology 40, 151-191

Adams, M. 1996c Setting the scene: the Mesolithic in Northern England. In Frodsham, P. (Ed) Neolithic Studies on No-man’s land: Papers on the Neolithic of Northern England from the Trent to theTweed. Northern Archaeology 13/14, 1-7

Adams, M. 1999 Beyond the Pale: some thoughts on the later prehistory of the Breamish Valley. In Bevan, B, (Ed) Northern Exposure: interpretive devolution and the Iron Ages in Britain. Leicester Archaeology Monographs 4: 111-122

Adams, M. 2000 The Optician’s trick: an approach to recording excavation using an iconic formation processes recognition system. In Roskams, S. (Ed) Interpreting Stratigraphy: Site evaluation, recording procedures and stratigraphic analysis. BAR International Series 910: 91-102

Adams, M. 2004 Alfred the Great. In Merullo, A. and Wenborn, N. (eds) British military greats:12-15 Cassell illustrated.

Adams, M. and O’Brien, C. 2013 A geophysical survey at Carrowmore Ecclesiastical Complex, Inishowen, August 2012. Donegal Annual Vol 65: 5-9 2013

Adams, M. and O’Brien, C. 2021 A Sparrow in the Temple? The Ephemeral and the Eternal in Bede’s Northumbria. In Hüglin, S., Gramsch, A. and Seppänen, L. (eds) 2021 Petrification Processes in Matter and Society, 155-166. Themes in Contemporary Archaeology. Cham: Springer Nature

Adams, M. 2021 St Columba as a territorial lord. Donegal Annual 73: 85-92

O’Brien, Adams, M., Haycock, D., O’Meara, D. and Pennie, E ‘The Early Ecclesiastical Complexes of Carrowmore and Clonca and their Landscape Context in Inishowen, Co. Donegal.’ Ulster Archaeological Journal, 72 (2013-14), 142-160.

O’Brien, C. and Adams, M. 2016a ‘Early Ecclesiastical Precincts and Landscapes of Inishowen, Co. Donegal’ 160-174 in T. Ó Carragáin and S. Turner (eds) Making Christian Landscapes in Atlantic Europe. University of Cork Press.

O’Brien, C. and Adams, M. 2016b The identification of Early Medieval monastic estates in Northumbria.  Medieval Settlement Research 31, 15-27

O’Brien C, Adams M, Haycock D, O’Meara D, Pennie J 2016 ‘The Early Ecclesiastical Complexes of Carrowmore and Clonca and their Landscape Context in Inishowen, County Donegal.’ Ulster Archaeological Journal Vol 72, (2013-14), 142–160.

O’Brien, C., Adams, M. and Whaley, D. 2018 King Ceolwulf’s land grants to St Cuthbert and their loss in the ninth century.  Archaeologia Aeliana Fifth Series, volume 47, 79-116

Magazine articles

Adams, M. 2002 Northumberland: landscape of spirits and saints. The Northumbrian April/May 2002: 23-26

Adams, M. 2005 Humphry Davy and the ‘murder’ Lamp.  History Today 55 (8): 4-5

Adams, M. 2006 John Martin and the Prometheans. History Today 56 (8): 40-49

Adams, M. 2007a A real Jack Aubrey? Naval History 21:1 56-60

Adams, M. 2007b After Nelson… Viva Collingwood! The Trafalgar Chronicle 17: 62-70

Adams, M. 2011 Philip Rahtz: a memoir. Antiquity: In Memoriam

Adams, M. 2012a Only time will tell. Novel Magazine Issue 6

Adams, M. 2012b A plank’s life. Alliterati 6: 20-21

Adams, M. 2012c The Age of Wood. Vintage Magazine Issue 5

Adams, M. 2012d John Martin and the theatre of artistic subversion. Public Domain Review uploaded 12.07.2012

Adams, M. 2013 Oswald Whiteblade: Northumbria’s ‘Irish’ king. The Northumbrian 135: August/September 2013.

Adams, M. 2016 Eda Frandsen: a voyage to the Dark Ages. Classic Boat Magazine May 2016

Adams, M. 2017  The ransom of the Golden Gospel: on the trail of the Codex aureus. Royal Literary Fund ‘Collected’.  https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/the-ransom-of-the-golden-gospel

Unpublished short stories and short fiction

1992 Caught short in Africa

Adams, M. 2010 The Céleste Paone affair

Adams, M. 2012 A death on the line

Adams, M. Fifty-first state