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Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.

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Hi, I am so thrilled to be joining you with a fantastic interview with Professor of History at Cambridge University, David Woodman,

whose new book, The First King of England, talks about, I would say, the very uncelebrated,

really mostly unknown history of the early medieval king, Athelsten, in England,

who united the kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland, East Anglia. Am I missing

anything? No, that's exactly what he did. And you're absolutely right, Dane. He's very little known.

And I hope that he gets better known in the years that come.

So just to dive right in, you call the year 927 the birth of England. Can you talk a little bit about why you think that is?

Yeah, of course. So Athelstan first became king in the year 924, and he had a bit of a struggle to cement his position on the throne. There was various opposition to him, a bit of hostility

from Winchester, which was the sort of heart of West Saxon politics in Wessex. And only a few

years later, in 927, he becomes the first king of the West Saxon line ever to have brought

together all of the formerly independent kingdoms that you mentioned into one and creates the

kingdom of the English

for the first time. Now, what specifically happens in 97 is that there had been a Viking

king, a man called Citrich, who had been ruling in York in the southern part of Northumbria

in the years that preceded this moment, but he dies in 97, and this gives Athelstan an opportunity to march

northwards, take York and Northumbria under his control, and cement his rule there. It's an

extraordinary moment. And for me, the year 97 should be one of the most memorable dates in English

history. And so after he sort of takes this opportunity in York, he'll go further north, get the submission of kings from Welsh territories, the king of the Scots, a few other kingdoms.

Is he contemporaneously calling himself the king of England?

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