Episode description
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.With:Sarah FootRegius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Christ Church, OxfordJohn HinesProfessor of Archaeology at Cardiff UniversityRichard GamesonProfessor of the History of the Book at Durham UniversityProducer: Thomas Morris.