If you're hearing this, I'm back online. That's not been the case now for nearly a week.

You might have noticed that the site has been going bananas.

Unfortunately, when I started this podcast, I built the site around the cheapest software available,

and now I'm learning why it was so cheap. So I'm getting some new fancy software for the site,

and in the meantime, I'm just trying to cobble things together to make sure it stays online so

you can get episodes. So thank you very much for all of your patience, and a big thank you to

members for supporting the podcast, because you're the only reason we get any software for the site.

And if the site goes down again, don't worry, I will bring it back up again.

Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is Episode 299,

the Shape of Power. This show is ad-free due to member support. If you'd like to support the show

and our fancy new software, you can do so at the British History Podcast.com for about the price

of a latte per month. And thank you very much to Andrew, Rosalind, and Janice for signing up already.

So I feel really whiskey drink right about now.

Eldermann and Thanes and Churls, these were the important cogs in the machine of government.

They had powerful roles, and they held powerful spaces within Anglo-Saxon culture.

And I think it's time we start to get to know these roles like the back of our hands,

because as you might have guessed, we're on the cusp of a new season of the BHP.

And for those of you who know your history, you'll know that things for the Anglo-Saxons are about

to get pretty rough. The triumph of the story of the last few generations of the House of

Wessex is about to take a turn, and it's far too easy to lay what happens next at the feet of certain

individuals. In fact, many historians do tend to just shrug and lay the blame on two or three

specific individuals, one of whom has a rather unfortunate nickname, the Unready. But as we're

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