Sunday, 22 March 2020

Athelstan by Tom Holland



This is the first of the Penguin Monarchs because although Athelstan was not the first person to rule all of what is now England since his rule England has not been divided (you might cite the Civil War, but that was a contest about who should rule England, but that England should be exist as a unit of government).

Yet of the names in the list of Penguin Monarchs his is the only one I was not familiar with, some of his predecessors are better known. How have the English misplaced their origin as a nation?

Looking back over a thousand years so much is strange, and yet the power-play and the politics are not really so far removed for our own age.

These slim volumes are educational and accessible.

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