Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is Episode 211, the

Battles of Facing and Meriton. This show is ad-free due to member support and as a way

of thanking members for keeping the show independent, I offer members only content, including

extra episodes and rough transcripts. You can get instant access to all the members

extras by signing up for membership at the British History Podcast.com. It costs about the price

of a pint per month. And thank you very much to Lisa, David and Jordan for signing up already.

It's January of 871. Let me try that again. It's still January of 871. A tremendous amount has

happened in the last fortnight and the year has barely begun. Now people do tend to compress the

past, especially periods that they're unfamiliar with, into short blurbs. It's why many people

are completely willing to accept a minute-by-minute account of World War II, but bulk at the idea

of spending more than an episode per decade during the Anglo-Saxon era. Frankly, the Anglo-Saxon

era was a long time ago and most of us are unfamiliar with it, so there's a tendency to want to

assume that nothing important happened back then and we should just breeze right through it until

we get to the period where people don't have weird names. Usually the thinking tends to go along

the lines of, we have multiple people named Athol Red, that's ridiculous, and it's also impossible

to keep straight, hurry up and get to the sensible period of history where we have multiple people

named William. And I get it, right? These are strange names and it was a long time ago. But as I

need to remind people on occasion, time passed at the same rate all throughout history. A minute back

then was the same length as a minute today. And just like how 2016 has been an incredibly

eventful cluster of f*** of a year, 871 was turning out to be pretty much the same for the West

Saxons. Consequently, we're still in 871 and we're picking up right after King Athol Red,

Prince Alfred and the f*** of Wessex chased the Danes back to the royal ton of Redding.

...