Speaker:  Tom Holland

Crowned in Kingston, Athelstan was the king who made England possible. It was an achievement won against the odds: the division of Britain into rival kingdoms, the conquest of much of the island by the Vikings, the need to foster an urban civilisation where there had been only brambles and weeds. Athelstan himself, though, was building on foundations laid by his immediate forebears, and this is their story too: Alfred, the only English king to be called ‘Great’; Edward, the great warrior whose conquests reached as far as the Humber; and Æthelflæd, the ‘Lady of the Mercians’. It is a remarkable story: a reminder that the making of England was never inevitable.

Admission – FREE

Refreshments and bar open from 7pm.