Athelstan

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the reign of King Athelstan.Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, came to the throne of Wessex in 925. A few years later he unified the kingdoms of England, and a decade after that defeated the Scots and styled himself King of all Britain. As well as being a brilliant military commander, Athelstan was a legal reformer whose new laws forever changed the way crime was dealt with in England. Unlike his predecessors, he pursued a foreign policy, seeking alliances with powerful rulers abroad. And unusually for an Anglo-Saxon king, we know what he looked like: he’s the earliest English monarch whose portrait survives.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Sarah Foot 6 episodes
  Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Christ Church, Oxford
• John Hines 6 episodes
  Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
• Richard Gameson 6 episodes
  Professor of the History of the Book at Durham University

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Programme ID: b00sv7wd

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sv7wd

Auto-category: 942.01 (Anglo-Saxon England)