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Hello, in his Chronicle of the English King is written in the 12th century. The historian William of Mawnsbury says a born monarch,

the firm opinion among the English remains that no one more just or more learned ever governed the kingdom.

This paragon of royal virtue is King Atholstown, who reign for 14 years during the first half of the 10th century.

Much less well known today than his grandfather Alfred the Great, Atholstown was the first king to rule a united England.

He was also successful and ruthless military commander and international diplomat under legal reformer.

He collected books and holy relics and strengthened the institutions of church and state. Atholstown made such an impact during his short reign,

the one chronically described among his death as a pillar of the dignity of the western world.

Widmeted has cast a life and achievements of King Atholstown, a Sarah Foote, regist professor of ecclesiastical history at Christ Church Oxford,

John Hines, professor of archaeology at Cardiff University, and Richard Gameson, professor of the history of the book at Durham University.

John Hines, before we discuss Atholstown himself, let's talk a bit about the England he was born into during the late 9th century.

What sort of a place was it who ruled it? What was going on?

Well, according to William of Mawnsbury, Atholstown was 30 years old when he came to the throne in 924,

which means that he was born late in the reign of his grandfather King Alfred, extremely important King.

I think one could easily argue one of the most important kings of the whole Anglo-Saxon period.

Atholstown would probably just remember the death of that grandfather,

and so he would have a knowledge of the 9th century as a period of tremendous change.

But it would be a knowledge that that sort of memory one gets from childhood,

and one relies on other people to explain to you what it actually meant.

England at the end of the 9th century was vastly different from England at the beginning of the 9th century,

and that was simply the result of the tremendous impact of the Viking invasions and attacks upon the whole area,

where at the start of the century there had been three major kingdoms, mercy of Wessex and Northumbria,

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