Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Have the Anglo-Saxons always been called the Anglo-Saxons? What did it take to make or break an early medieval king?

And how did the arrival of Christianity on the shores of the British Isles revolutionise

the governance of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms?

Speaking to Emily Griffith, Joanna Story, Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester,

answers your top questions on the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Hi, Jay, thank you so much for joining me on the History Extra podcast.

Delighted to be here, Emily.

So we are going to be delving into listener questions all about the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

And the first question we've got is one from Instagram, and that is what do we mean when

we're talking about the term Anglo-Saxon?

The term Anglo-Saxon is one that historians use to describe the period before 1066, that is,

before the Norman conquest. We use it as a term to describe both the peoples,

the kingdoms and the culture of the period at that time in the area that eventually became

the Kingdom of England. So it's a term that's very specifically used for that pre-conquest period.

And it's in fact really important that we contained the use of the

term Anglo-Saxon to that early period, because sometimes it is a word that's used in other contexts,

even in contemporary contexts, and that's really often not very helpful, because it's a label that

we prefer to have defining this early period of English history.

So before the Norman conquest of 1066.

And are there any other names that we should know about for these people?

Well, in fact, Anglo-Saxon is a term that we get used first really in the early 10th century systematically,

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