Speaker – Caroline Godden

An introduction to the renowned Anglo-Saxon King Æthelstan, the self-styled ‘King of All Britain’, who was crowned here in Kingston in 925AD. He is famed for his momentous victory at the Battle of Brunanburh, for his international political outlook, and for the eventual dominance of his rule in England, Wales and Scotland. But more than this, he was a ruler whose individual touches and personal tastes can be seen across different aspects of his kingship – from changes in his law-codes to his international search for holy relics and religious texts. This talk will explore the reign of Æthelstan and what it was that made him extraordinary.

Admission – FREE

Refreshments and bar open from 7pm.

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.