Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 297, The

Hundreds and The Wapen Takes. This show is ad-free due to member support and is a way

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

extra episodes and rough transcripts. Most recently, on the member's feed, Dr. Z and

I discussed some of the choices that were made and how we produced the show. We answered

some questions and we also briefly talked about how her research work on Portland Gang

Culture bears some weird similarities to Anglo-Saxon honor culture. Basically, it's a lot

like hanging out with us at a pub, but without any risk of getting peer pressured into doing

karaoke later on. And you can get instant access to that episode and all the members

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

price of a lottape per month and thank you very much to Patrick, Jose and Deborah for

signing up already. Recently, we've been speaking a lot about the life of a handful of individuals.

Namely, we've been talking about the rulers that have descended from the line of Alfred.

And there are a couple reasons for that. The first is the simple fact that by the virtue

of how limited literacy was during this era, these people are the lives that we know the

most about. The other reason though is that the formation of England is very much a story

of politics. It was about battles and treaties and alliances. But as is true with every era,

life is so much bigger than what we can see going on at the very top of society. And in the

900s, life was changing in Britain, especially life in England. For the upper echelons of society,

this change was big and was coming fast. The king had been murdered during a time of turmoil,

as white as England appeared to be on the precipice of war. And that kindling fire was being

passed to the king's younger brother, Adred, a boy who was now being asked to fill the shoes of

...