Alfred the Great: The Man Who Made England

$39.00

Alfred the Great: The Man Who Made England

Name: Alfred the Great: The Man Who Made England
Brand: The Rite Books
SKU: 9780719566660
Price: 39.00 CAD
Availability: InStock

$39.00

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This title is one of the four books of The Angloid Bundle — The Anglo-Saxons, Alfred the Great, A Great and Terrible King, and Henry V together for $139.99 instead of $163.96. You save $23.97.

The Only King Called “Great”

Alfred is the only English king ever to be called ‘the Great’. It was not a title given by political supporters, nor the sycophantic gift of an official biographer, nor a self-styled honour. It was the gift of history. Justin Pollard's biography sets out to show why the ninth-century king of Wessex earned it.

From Fugitive to Founder

In the winter of 878 Alfred's kingdom had been reduced to a few square miles of Somerset marsh, its king a fugitive at Athelney. From that low point Pollard traces the counterattack at Edington, the taming of the Danes, and the rebuilding that followed: the network of fortified burhs, the reorganised army, the first English navy, the law code, and the court of scholars through which Alfred set out to educate a broken people. It was Alfred who first imagined a single realm of the English — the idea his children and grandchildren would make real.

Pollard’s Account

Pollard writes an enthralling, authoritative life that keeps the man visible inside the legend — the chronic illness, the burnt-cakes folklore, the restless intelligence. “A delicious historical treat,” in Stephen Fry's verdict.