Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 193.

Alfred the Young, part 2.

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So the stuff that gets cut out, the things that we'd like to talk about but don't have the time, or just general theory on how the show is put together, we're even thinking about doing a live reading of a few choice pieces of hate mail I've received.

So keep an eye out for that.

And with that out of the way, let's get to the show. And I'm actually really excited about this one because we're finally getting to a point in history where we can start to learn about the people beyond just reignal dates and battles and things like that.

We're really getting a sense of who these people were and with Alfred in particular, we're even getting a window into his childhood, which is fantastic.

It really does help us flesh out a picture for a man that typically is treated more like an icon or like a statue. So this is really neat stuff.

Anyway, when we left off last week, we were talking about Alfred's upbringing and how he was a proficient hunter from a young age and how he honed those skills throughout the rest of his life.

We also talked about how he lamented the fact that he was a literate until he was about 12 years old, something which he blamed upon the poor state of education in Wessex.

This dichotomy in his childhood, the neglect of academic learning combined with the emphasis that was placed upon noble sport, was something that would bother him for the rest of his life.

In fact, this was such a defining aspect of his character that decades later, when he went on to develop a school within his own court, which actually was similar to the one being run by Charlemagne during his reign,

well Alfred specifically arranged things so that a young boy's literary studies would begin before any quote, manly pursuits end quote.

Now this restructuring of priorities with reading and writing being pushed to the fore isn't something that Alfred invented.

Standard continental educational practices for the period emphasize literacy over sporting, but it still gives you a sense of how Alfred felt about his early years, and how important he felt that it was for noble boys within his kingdom to be able to read and write in both English and Latin.

Under his guidance, the primary goal of childhood education would be to develop wisdom and intellect, and physical activities would be secondary to that.

This whole story actually reminds me of St. Patrick. You might remember that even in old age, St. Patrick was still insecure about his grasp of Latin due to his poor early education.

And to me, that story and this one about Alfred have the hint of truth to it. If adulthood is, in part, an attempt to repair the inadequacies of our childhoods, Alfred's actions and the account of his feelings regarding his early years provided by Assur would suggest that even as he was reaching his twilight days, Alfred, like Patrick, was still upset about the state of his early education.

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