I don't think of history as dungeons and dragons I think it really happened. Winchester takes you back to the very dawn of the nation, to Lucius, to Alfred the Great, to William the Conquerer.
To the spread of Christianity through the old networks of Rome with all the miracle men, missionaries and saints.
To the time before political unity when the island was constantly besieged and invaded and plundered from without.
How all this stuff plays out and the material traces that it leaves.
These two entwined and turbulent histories of secular and religious power leading up to the reformation. And the knowledge also that the language is being born here also. That this stuff precedes Chaucer by hundreds of years.
All very, very potent.