I wrote this in the distant past: 2011-09-06.
Michael D. C. Drout’s enthusiasm is contagious in The Modern Scholar: The Anglo-Saxon World; now I kind of want to go read Beowulf and The Dream of the Rood. The lectures discuss the history (with hundred-year divisions framed in a helpful mnemonic of MCGVR - migration, conversion, golden age, viking raids, reform), literature, and legacy of the Anglo-Saxons.
Apparently Thomas Jefferson was quite taken with (the idea of) the Anglo-Saxons; he tried to encourage education in the language and even proposed that the Great Seal of the United States include “Hengist and Horsa, the two brothers who were the legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain.” [1] I don’t think I’m sad that that didn’t work out.