Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine,

Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Korthorn. King Oswald was a seventh century ruler of Northumbria. He helped establish Christianity there and became a saint after his death.

And by the 12th century he'd become an important figure in many countries, particularly Germany.

Dr. Johanna Dale of University College London has been researching Oswald and for today's

episode she told our content director Dave Musgrove about what she's found out.

Yohana can you just introduce us to this Dave Musgrove about what she's found out.

Yeah, Hannah, can you just introduce us to this figure, Oswald?

Who was he and when was he around?

Well, he's one of the kind of early Christian kings of Northumbria and he's killed in

battle in 642 by a mercy and king Pender who's a non-Christian although there

are actually other Christians in the army he fights again.

But this kind of gory death sets him up to be one of the heroes of Bede's ecclesiastical history,

which is written about 90 years after Oswald's death and in many ways

his kind of afterlife is as interesting as his life but perhaps listeners would

like to know a little bit about his life before we embark on what happens later.

So as was born in 603 or 604, we're not entirely sure.

And his father is king of one of the two Northumbrian kingdoms,

but his father is then killed by his uncle,

and Oswald is exiled to Ireland for over a decade.

And while he's in Ireland, he actually converts to Christianity.

And he's probably baptized on the island of Iona.

Then his uncle dies and two other kings have a very short lived reign of a year and Oswald comes back to Northrambira in about in 634 and she fights a battle against a heathen king, Cadwaller and he defeats Cadwaller at the battle of Heavenfield as it becomes known.

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