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 Anglo-Saxon England podcast, episode 14, Pirates from the North.

Last time we got to the end of the reign of Egbert of Wessex in 839.

It was a reign which had transformed the political map of England.

With the emergence of a greater Wessex, comprised of all the kingdoms south of the tens with

Resix recognises overlord of the still powerful Mercian kingdom, East Anglia

and Essex. Quite possibly Northumbria too, though as far as Northumbria is concerned more in name

than practical reality.

Despite the dramatic downfall of Mercier from her by now well-established supremacy, in many ways the fundamentals stayed exactly the same.

It's probably true to say that Kent and Sussex no longer really exist as independent political

entities, but was still really in a period of the heptaki and England

...