This is a paid advertisement for Better Help who make mental health care much more accessible to everyone online.

Better Help have a seasonal message, New Year, Same You.

This seems a thoroughly sensible and positive message to me, because we can get a bit

obsessed right now about new resolutions. When really we're doing a load of things right already and

can build on that. Just so you know in the spirit of full disclosure I, for example, have been

making more effort to get in touch with friends and get together, even if it means trolling

into the big smoke and religiously doing exercises every morning to the point where I'm even

beginning to enjoy them. Who'd have thunk it? So I'm going to build on that. Better

help know that therapy helps you find your strengths so you can ditch the extreme resolutions and make changes that really stick.

If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try.

They provide access to UK mental health professionals with a wide variety of expertise, no referral is needed.

And my listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash History Eng.

That's Better H-E-L-P. dot com slash History-E-N-G. Hello everyone and welcome to the history of England episode four Greater Wessex.

If you're following me in real time,

then when I say last time we, that means last time we six or seven months ago. Sorry about that. Oops and all

But anyway last time we came to the end of the reign of offer with his death in 796,

after many decades of mercy and supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

And we heard how the best laid plans of men went astray when his son died.

Wasting utterly the enormous time and effort and very probably cold-blooded murder, he'd

invested to ensure the survival of his dynasty.

Now, the 9th century is an absolutely cataclysmic period in the history of England. There can be few more dramatic

and blood-soaked, a genuine furnace in which England begins to be forged.

...