"Edward the Elder" by Michael John Kay

 

The River Great Ouse at Bedford was once the frontier between the Saxons and the Vikings. Edward crossed the river to capture Bedford during his reign.

Edward the Elder was the son of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. Alfred is justly celebrated for resisting Viking incursions into the territory of Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that covered most of southern England, and reaching a long-lasting peace treaty with the Vikings, albeit one that recognised a split between the Anglo-Saxon part of England (Wessex and half of Mercia, the kingdom in the Midlands, against the Welsh border) and the Viking part (called the Danelaw). But Edward was the King who, with his sister Aethelflaed who was Queen of Mercia) took the fight to the Vikings, retrieving the Midlands and East Anglia. Edward's son Aethlestan was to continue the fight, liberating almost all of what is now England, and creating the unified country that we now have.

So Edward (called the Elder by later generations to distinguish him from Edward the Confessor) is a very important figure in English history and one who has been unjustly overlooked, overshadowed, perhaps, by his father. This biography puts Edward back in the limelight.

It also tells his story remarkably well. My only quibble is that the writer frequently tells you the same thing twice, for example, when he describes the boundary between Wessex-Mercia and the Danelaw, the second time in slightly more detail. But if this is the price to pay for a complicated tale to be told with clarity, so be it, although it does make the book longer (and the print is quite small so my ageing eyes found it sometimes wearisome).

It is a complicated tale. A patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms battled against a miscellany of Scandinavian marauders. The situation was rarely coherent. Given that all this happened over a thousand years ago, the sources are often either missing, possibly inaccurate or incomplete. The author does a great job or pinpointing dates and places without being overly nit-picking (for example, he tends to summarise scholarly opinion without going into the details). The result is a readable history for the general reader.

I loved it. So many of the places that appear are places I have known, such as Kingston-on-Thames were Edward (probably) and Aethelstan (definitely) had their coronations, sitting on a block of sarsen stone. And Bedford, a frontier town, whose Viking stronghold on the northern bank of the River Great Ouse surrendered to Edward, at which point he built a neighbouring fortified burh on the southern bank. And London where, the Roman city having been abandoned, the Vikings ruled Lundenwic before the Saxons retook the city moving the centre (around 883) back to the Roman ruins as Lundenburh. 

But it's not all warfare. There are lots of other interesting tales and mysteries, such as: Why did Edward ditch his first wife Ecgwyn and send his son by that relationship to be brought up by his sister in Mercia? Was she a concubine as was hinted? And why did Edward's first heir die only fourteen days after Edward; was he assassinated by his half-brother? And who was the nun abducted from Wimborne Minster by Edward's cousin Aethelwold during his first rebellion; was she Edward's sister Aethelgifu and did Aethelwold marry her and if so was it consensual?

This is the story of a critical period in the founding of the country we now know as England and this great book rescues Edward from the neglect of history.

Selected quotes:

• “The slave trade was part of accepted practice, with slaves bought and sold across markets throughout the known world.” (Ch 16)

January 2024; 263 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God