Edward the Confessor, one of the last kings of Anglo-Saxon England, is in part a figure of myths created in the later medieval period. David Woodman traces the course of his 24-year-long reign through the lens of contemporary sources, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Vita dwardi Regis to the Bayeux Tapestry, to uncover the fraught and complex politics of his life. Edward was a shrewd politician who, having endured a long period of exile from England in his youth, ascended the throne in 1042 and came to control a highly sophisticated administration. Such was his power in the mid-eleventh century that the late Anglo-Saxon coinage from his reign is the only example in western Europe of a royal monopoly across such a large area.
What we know as 'England' had only relatively recently come into being and Woodman constructs a portrait of an age by untangling the truth from the saintly legend and shows how the events of Edward's reign led, through many twists and turns, to the Norman Conquest.
From one of today's leading historians of the early medieval period, an enthralling chronicle of thelstan, England's founder king whose achievements of 927 rival the Norman Conquest of 1066 in shaping Britain as we know it
The First King of England is a foundational biography of thelstan (d. 939), the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the kingdom of the English. In this panoramic work, David Woodman blends masterful storytelling with the latest scholarship to paint a multifaceted portrait of this immensely important but neglected figure, a man celebrated in his day as much for his benevolence, piety, and love of learning as he was for his ambitious reign. Set against the backdrop of warring powers in early medieval Europe, The First King of England sheds new light on thelstan's early life, his spectacular military victories and the innovative way he governed his kingdom, his fostering of the church, the deft political alliances he forged with Europe's royal houses, and his death and enduring legacy. It begins with the reigns of Alfred the Great and Edward the Elder, thelstan's grandfather and father, describing how they consolidated and expanded the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. But it was thelstan who would declare himself the first king of all England when, in 927, he conquered the viking kingdom at York, required the submission of a Scottish king, and secured an annual tribute from the Welsh kings. Beautifully illustrated and breathtaking in scope, The First King of England is the most comprehensive, up-to-date biography of thelstan available, bringing a magisterial richness of detail to the life of a consequential British monarch whose strategic and political sophistication was unprecedented for his time.