The Maker of England

It was only by chance that Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great and born to a woman of ‘inferior birth’, was accepted as king of Wessex and Mercia. Yet two years later, in 926 AD, he conquered the last Viking stronghold and became the first to unite Anglo-Saxon England under a single crown. The Maker of England recounts the extraordinary life of the ambitious ruler who forged a nation. Using the widest range of sources, including a lost tenth-century biography identified here for the first time, Michael Wood vividly recreates Athelstan’s childhood, education and adolescence, and the bitter succession struggle that preceded his fourteen-year reign. We learn about the young king who conceived a visionary plan for an ‘empire of the world of Britain’ that would foster peace in all of Europe. We meet a ‘ring-giver and lord of warriors’ who saw protecting the poor as his foremost duty, and whose innovations in law, coinage, learning, culture and assembly politics endure to this day. Rich with original insights, The Maker of England makes the case for seeing Athelstan as a presiding genius of the English state. A bold, compelling biography, it restores him to his rightful place in the grand narrative of British history.