Category: Podcast Episodes

Every episode of The British History Podcast. This category includes cultural history, storyline episodes, English history, Welsh history, Scottish history, and even some Irish history and Roman history thrown in.

236 – A Return to Scholarship

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“I can not find anything better in man, than that he know, and nothing worse than that he be ignorant.”

That’s a quote from Alfred, and I think it’s my favorite quote. The nice thing about Alfred is that he’s a man for all seasons. There’s something in his reign for everyone. He’s got an excellent comeback story. He’s goes through a sort of Che Guevara phase. He’s got a period where he’s riding around with a cavalry strike force like King Arthur. He’s got a pious side. A scholarly side. A horny side. He has a keen mind for politics, for manipulation, and for tactics. Whatever your need… there’s an Alfred for that.

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235 – Alfred’s Educational Reforms

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One of the interesting things about piecing together the life of Alfred is that we find little windows into who he was in the strangest of places. Most kings of this era didn’t write much down for us to read… but Alfred did. In fact, he translated entire books (which we’re going to talk about today) and he didn’t just translate the books, he included his own thoughts on them as well. For example, in his translation of Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory the Great. Alfred tells us…

“[T]here were happy times then throughout England and… the kings, who had authority over this people, obeyed God and his messengers; and how they not only maintained their peace, morality and authority at home but also extended their territory outside; and how they succeeded both in wisdom and in warfare.”

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234 – The Sons of Rhodri and AEthelred’s Beautiful Hair

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This episode has been difficult to write. In fact, the last several have been difficult, and it all comes down to issues of time. Not space time flexing due to gravitational pull, and issues of whether a minute for Alfred in Wessex was the same as a minute for someone climbing the alps. Just good old fashioned questions of timing.

What goes first? When does it happen? What happens next and when?

The problem is that history, at its root, is a story, and a story generally needs a sequence of events. I mean, sure, some storytellers like William S Burroughs have completely cast off the idea of a sequence to great effect. But in general, to tell a story that people can understand, A needs to be followed by B which needs to be followed by C.

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233 – Alfred’s Powerplay and the Restructuring of Wessex

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While all of the political wrangling was occurring in Tamworth, Guthrum-AEthelstan was relocating to East Anglia, and he was bringing serious changes with him.

Culture isn’t something that you can easily uproot in a person – it goes deep. Sure, Guthrum had spent 12 days feasting like and Anglo Saxon, and even gave that one awkward strip tease to demonstrate that he was committed to embracing the Anglo Saxon ways and their god. And honestly, I get the sense that he genuinely was trying to acclimate to his new culture. For example, shortly after moving into East Anglia we see him issuing coins under his baptismal name: AEthelstan. So not only was he accepting his new Christian name, but he was minting coins… which wasn’t something that was generally done by Danish Kings. In fact, Guthrum was the first of the Scandinavian Kings of Britain to mint his own coins, so I do get the sense he was trying. But he had a lifetime of being Scandinavian and a 12 day crash course wasn’t going to completely erase all of that. And Culture is more than how you pray and what you wear. It’s how you work, how you entertain yourself, how you organize your home, your government – culture is basically how we do things, all things.

Culture is all encompassing.

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231 – Anglo Saxon Economics and Money with Professor Rory Naismith

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Follow Rory on Twitter @Rory_Naismith and make sure to follow him at his Academic page at Kings College London as well as on Academia.edu.

This episode covers how the economy transitioned from food rent to coinage, how currency was a reflection of the soul, why King Offa had such funky hair, and much more.

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230 – Guthrum Gets a Bath

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For Alfred, everything had changed at Chippenham. It was at Chippenham where he had lost his crown and his kingdom… it’s also possible that he was the victim of a coup, considering how Guthrum’s conquest had gone virtually unchallenged. Chippenham was a place of great shame for the House of Wessex.

That is, until now. Now Chippenham was the site of his reinstatement. It had taken a mere matter of months and here Alfred was in May with Guthrum locked behind the walls of the Vill, and he had no choice but to surrender. Here, at Chippenham, Alfred was finally ascendant.

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