Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 233,

Outference Powerplay and the Restructuring of Lessx. As always, 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. And this month we've had two members episodes that you

might be interested in. The first is about a two-hour long discussion with

Dr. Z on the subject of her PhD. One of the nice things about working with Z is

that I'm always learning something new when talking to her. And to be perfectly

honest, even though I was the editor for her PhD and so I'm quite familiar with it,

I still learn new things during this discussion. It really was a fun talk and

I was pleased that she decided to make herself available to the members. The

other episode that was released this month centers around a rather odd story

that I uncovered while researching this episode that you're listening to right

now. The thing is that as I was pouring through books and articles and

charters trying to piece together the story of Alfred after he retakes his

kingdom, I noticed that there was evidence of a major shake-up going on in

Mercia at the same time. And at some point, Alfred and Guthram signed a treaty

which split Mercia into two and at some other point a man named Atholred took

control of Mercia, or at least part of Mercia. And the thing that was driving me

nuts was that everyone seems to have different timelines for these events. And

each timeline suggests a completely different version of reality. And that's

really consequential because by the end of all of these events, Mercia is

...