William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury (c. 1095/96 – c. 1143) was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. C. Warren Hollister so ranks him among the most talented generation of writers of history since Bede, "a gifted historical scholar and an omnivorous reader, impressively well versed in the literature of classical, patristic and earlier medieval times as well as in the writings of his own contemporaries. Indeed William may well have been the most learned man in twelfth-century Western Europe."

William was born about the year 1095/96, in Wiltshire. His father was Norman and his mother English. He spent his whole life in England, and his adult life as a monk at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire, England.