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Or if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. For Alfred the next few days were like some terrible dream. He could barely remember how he and his bodyguards got out of the hall staggering

desperately into the snow, stumbling through the night, freezing and frightened and yet somehow

thank the Lord still alive. That first night they kept moving until sunrise before

taking shelter in a farmer's shed. Alfred fell asleep instantly, and by the time

he woke, hungry and shivering the light was fading. For the next few days they moved only after dark.

They scavenged for food, found shelter at dawn and slept until twilight,

before shaking themselves awake to resume their journey. Eventually the landscape began to change, the hills

flattened out, the ground was becoming bogier, marshier. That Dominic, as you will rel know, because you wrote that immortal prose, is from your new book,

Fury of the Vikings, the latest in your splendid series of ventures in time, it describes the escape of Alfred in early January 878 from the treacherous Viking ambush on Chippenham.

He has no choice but to flee and he ends up in the what the

Anglo-Saxon chronicle calls the Fenn Fastnesses of Athlney, the Prince's Island in the Somerset levels, which now of course is prime farmland because they've all been drained, but back then was very, very treacherous,

boggie, watery, and therefore a perfect hiding place. And that is where he he takes shelter.

So just for those people who have forgotten as if you good, we're talking about the life of Alfred

the Great and his battles against the Vikings, his role in in creating England's history.

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