England was long attractive to conquerors or raiders for a variety of reasons, from its resources (notably its productive agricultural land and minerals, attractive to Romans, Anglo-Saxons, vikings and Normans) to its strategic importance as a large offshore island with extensive Continental interactions and close to its southern neighbour (and potentially too close for comfort, a particular concern for Caesar after his conquest of Gaul, with which southern Britain had substantial affinities - though it was left to Claudius to expand the Empire beyond the Channel): Norse raiders were conversely drawn to its proximity and extensive irregular island coastline, a vulnerability in the face of seaborne attackers ( and btw for them it was across or sometimes down rather than up, so climatically less unappealing than for Roman soldiers with the misfortune to be posted there.)

The country's economic condition in this millennium is somewhat puzzling: that it exported grain under Roman rule and provided viking raiders with enormous treasure suggests that it had productive capacity to spare even with the limited technology of the time, yet was at least by the later period already a place of notable wealth. That it seems simultaneously to have been under-exploitated yet capable of yielding a surplus may offer a clue to its subsequent ascent as well as its attractiveness to invaders.

The country passed through various forms of administration - from a patchwork of local kingdoms or chiefdoms and then a Roman province under successive governors and occupied by 40-50,000 Roman troops and again a patchwork of post-Roman and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, to a unified realm from the 9th-10th centuries (for a time in the 11th under Danish rule) to a Norman kingdom notable for its centralisation under the crown, another source of its later power even as royal fiat gave way to parliamentary government, most notably from the 17th century when a king ignored his legislature and rather lost his head. Regional identities (and accents!) persist, but with none of the political continuity that characterises Continental provinces and regions.

The big facts though in modern England are industry and Empire, both mostly or wholly gone but casting a vast shadow. Early factory mechanisation made Britain (as the state now was) the world's economic frontrunner from the 1780s until the emergence of more dynamic rivals from the mid-19th century, and while its economy is today (like most of the developed world) essentially a post-industrial one reliant mainly on services, the abruptness of the earlier break transformed society and disrupted its traditions more thoroughly than probably anywhere else. A "deep" England survives in some more rural parts but for most persists only in period TV drama. This is a modern nation, for all its nominal adherence to (largely likewise re-imagined) pageantry invoking earlier times.

The other thing that hasn't gone away is the phantom of colonial empire in which Britain used its industrial might and wealth to impose its rule over at one time a quarter of the world. The loss of bygone power and prestige still provokes bewilderment and sometimes resentment among a (mostly but not exclusively older) segment of the population and hangs over political life: it's not omnipresent, but you'll encounter it. Race is reassuringly less of an issue than in some societies, England's insularity and innate conservatism being tempered by its modern reality and centuries of global exchange. But Acheson's observation that "Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role" remains relevant.

For a good place to begin the story I still recommend PH Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England, after which it's probably best to trace developments thematically (society, economy, political evolution) unless you want to tackle the multi-volume Oxford History of England (two series, the old now being replaced apart from its first volumes of which the updated two-part vol 1 and Stenton's revised vol 2 remain important for the first millennium).

Crochet's an interesting one, to my surprise only emerging as a discrete form in the early 19th century but with antecedents in 18th-century Scottish knitting and French embroidery. So that's something I learned today!

So. Here is a very simplified timeline of Britain:
-Before 43 AD Britain is made up of a lot of Celtic tribes, not that dissimilar from Gaul.

-In 43 AD the Romans invade and conquer what is today more or less England and Wales. This is an unruly province (it's isolated and far away, that plays a role) so they put a lot of soldier on it and build Hadrian's wall (under emperor Hadrian) to keep the picts (in what is today Scotland) out.

-Roman culture is present in cities but is still very much limited.

-In 410 Rome is falling apart and Rome leaves. The island is now made up of small Celtic kingdoms/tribes more or less Romanized. From this time up to the 800 or so there isn't a lot of written sources, so it's very very difficult to be sure of the details.

-From the 500s onward Germans start to migrate to the Island and takes over the eastern part. Those Germans are Angles and Saxons (from which we get England and Anglo-Saxon). They rule over and integrate the local Celts and basically rule over what isn't mountains (so not Wales and not Scotland..... so England). That's where the Wales (Celtic) and England divides comes from. England is not united but made up of several kingdoms, around the 700 there are seven small Anglo-Saxons kingdoms.

-Around 800 Scandinavian raiders (what we call Vikings, which isn't a culture, it's a job basically, it means to leave for an expedition) start attacking Western Europe, Britain included. Around 860 Scandinavians start to migrate in large number in order to settle in Britain. That's not the first time this happened (the Angles and Saxons did it, and it's not the only place the Scandinavians settle, they do it in France, in Russia, so on).

-From the 870s to the 1030s Norse/Scandinavians from Denmark control Eastern England. In 1042 finding it too difficult to maintain the Danes leave. An Anglo-Saxon king now controls all of England for the first time.

-In 1066 Normans (from the French region of Normandy, descendants of Scandinavians and local French people) led by William the Conqueror invade England (at the same time the Norwegian also try to take it over, in what is the last Norse invasion of England, it fails). They conquer it and that's where the modern England we know come from : an Anglo-Saxon people (with Norse influence and a dash of Celts) ruled by a French nobility which as centuries progress becomes more and more English (but it explains why the English language doesn't looks like Germans but uses a lot of French words).

England only becomes the UK in 1707 when England and Scotland (ruled by the same kings since 1603) merge into a single country.