The formation of England occurred against the odds: an island divided into rival kingdoms, under savage assault from Viking hordes. But, after King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex and his son Edward expanded it, his grandson Athelstan inherited the rule of both Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and was hailed as Rex totius Britanniae: 'King of the whole of Britain'.
Tom Holland recounts this extraordinary story with relish and drama, transporting us back to a time of omens, raven harbingers and blood-red battlefields. As well as giving form to the figure of Athelstan - devout, shrewd, all too aware of the precarious nature of his power, especially in the north - he introduces the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Aethelflaed, 'Lady of the Mercians', who brought Athelstan up at the Mercian court. Making sense of the family rivalries and fractious conflicts of the Anglo-Saxon rulers, Holland shows us how a royal dynasty rescued their kingdom from near-oblivion and fashioned a nation that endures to this day.
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978-0-241-18782-1 (9780241187821)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Tom Holland is an award-winning historian, biographer, and broadcaster. His books include Rubicon (winner of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize); Persian Fire (winner of the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award), In the Shadow of the Sword, and Dynasty. His most recent book, Pax, covers the heyday of the Roman Empire, from the death of Nero to Hadrian.
Holland has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC, and his translation of Herodotus was published in 2013 by Penguin Classics. He is co-presenter of the world's most downloaded history podcast, The Rest is History.
