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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 47, the man who saved English.

In this episode, we're going to look at one of the most important figures in the overall history of the English language.

The 9th Century King of Wessex known to history as Alfred the Great.

He is in fact the only English monarch to have the distinction of being called the Great.

And for purposes of our story, he's great because he preserved the English language from conquest by the Vikings.

Last time, we explored the concept of Anglo-Saxon kingship,

and we looked at the ongoing Viking invasions in the first half of the 9th Century.

This time, we're going to move the story forward to the second half of the 9th Century,

and the period during which the Vikings shifted from being pirates and raiders to being conquerors and colonizers.

One by one, the Anglo-Saxon kings were defeated, killed, or driven out of Britain altogether.

And as the English kings fell, the culture and the language of the Anglo-Saxons began to be replaced by that of the Vikings.

But it was Alfred who stemmed the tide of the Viking conquest.

Now, I had originally planned to discuss Alfred's role in history of English in one episode,

but it isn't really possible to do the story justice in one single episode.

So this time, we're going to look at the arrival of the Viking conquerors,

and the overall events which led to the establishment of the Dane Law in Britain.

And we'll look at Alfred's attempts to hold on to Wessex.

And ultimately, how he secured the Anglo-Saxon culture and language.

So the focus of this episode will be more on the historic events of the period.

And it will also focus on the battles over land and territory.

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