David Woodman - Athelstan: First King of England

Rex Factor

History

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We chat to the historian David Woodman about his book The First King of England: Athelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom. He tells us about why Athelstan (not Alfred) should be considered England's first king, how Athelstan was able to exert so much power in England and Britain, plus gets us exciting for the upcoming millennium of the foundation of England. Head to David's website for more information about him and his work: https://www.dwoodman.co.uk/ Sign up for lots of bonus content, including an ad-free version of the main podcast and over 400 additional bonus podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/rexfactor "(00:00:00) Intro" "(00:02:30) Athelstan Becoming King" "(00:10:29) Athelstan as First King" "(00:15:14) Vikings" "(00:28:16) Athelstan's Laws" "(00:33:12) Athelstan and Religion" "(00:38:25) Emperor of Britain" "(00:49:57) Alfred vs Athelstan" "(00:56:52) Farewells" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:07.0	Thank you. Welcome to Rex Factor. This week, David Woodman, Athelstan, the first king of England. With your host, Graham Duke and Ali.
1:15.0	Hello, hello, and welcome to Rex Factor, where we are currently between series, having finished ranking the consorts of England, but not yet having started on series four reviewing all the nearly monarchs of England. So it's actually been quite a while since we've released a podcast. So apologies for our absence. What about the other stuff we do? So yeah, so we've been doing bonus content. So if you sign up on Patreon and become a privy counsellor, then there's all sorts of stuff there. And we'll be doing a message as in previous episodes soon, so sharing some clips of our local legend episodes we've been doing.
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