Customer Reviews

Alfred the Great: War, Culture and Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (The Medieval World)

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I bought this book on the recommendation of a professor of mine when embarking upon my senior thesis this spring, and though Abel's book did not end up playing a large part in my paper, I went back to this book after the term was over. This book was an easy, quick, and absorbing read, while informative, cohesive, and clear in its aims and the points it was trying to express. My only criticism might be a minor one -- As an English major, I am more interested in the ideological, cultural, or literary influence or views of an individual. Naturally, as a history professor, Abels interests were not the same as mine. He devotes a lot of the book to details of Alfred's battles with the Vikings, and at times, this failed to hold my attention. This criticism, as a result, is only the result of a personal preference.

Alfred, being the only English monarch styled "the Great", is a notoriously difficult subject to write history about. The Victorian cult of Alfred made him a marked man for the debunkers of the Dead White European Male focus of history. Attempts at an even-handed review of the Wessex king's life are fraught with peril.

This book does the job magnificently. Alfred the warrior, ruler, innovator, strategist, and moralist are all presented well within the context of a 9th century Anglo-Saxon world. Alfred the pious and Alfred the ruthless are both shown as parts of the same man.

While concluding that Asser's "Life" is a legitimate source of biography for Alfred, the author does not limit himself. Extensive use and comparison between versions of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" is combined with what limited charter evidence survives, archaeological discoveries and an examination of coinage patterns to round out the picture of Alfred and his times.

One major strength of this work is its very careful comparisons of Alfred and his activities to those of predecessor kings of Wessex and successor kings of the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred's reign is not studied in isolation. How Alfred was both traditional and innovative in contrast to his father and brothers helps place Alfred in the context of his times. The legacy which Alfred left his descendants (to become kings of all England) is given special attention.

The author is circumspect in trying to get inside of Alfred's head. Alfred's physical afflictions are examined with an eye to a modern medical diagnosis and their effects on Alfred's personality. Using the marginalia in Alfred's own translations from Latin into the vernacular, the author tries to see inside Alfred the man - all the while cognizant that such a review is only speculative.

This is a great book and a very good read.

This is a good solid and concise biography of King Alfred (871-99) that is not just a synthesis of earlier and current work, but also includes some new research and interpretations by the author. It consists of a chronological narrative with an introduction and background chapter, a short epilogue, and three thematic chapters on "The Defence of the Realm," "The Reign of Solomon," and "The Practice of Kingship" as an interlude between the death of Guthrum in 890 and the new invasion by vikings under Hasteinn in 892. Abels has a keen sense of both the significance of Alfred to his own time and the shifting place the king has occupied in the historiography of his reign - which it seems has become a bit of a battlegound of alternate views in itself. Abels places his work in the context of the work of others without making and criticisms of other's research.

In Abels book, what stands out first and foremost is that the author creates a three-dimensional sense of space. He not only has visited many of the sites he discusses --his "Alfred pilgrimage of 1989" as he calls it - but he has tested them out. For instance, in March of 878, while Alfred was a refugee from Danish invaders in Wessex, he established a camp at Athelney in the Somerset marshes from which he launched his assault on the Danes. In Asser's near contemporary account, "King Alfred, with a few men, made a fortress at a place called Athelney, and from that fortress with the thegns of Somerset he again waged war ceaselessly and tirelessly against the heathens". After pointing to the site's high ground that would serve as a "natural lookout," Abels adds: "It is difficult for a modern visitor to envision Athelney as an 'island' rising out of the marshes; erosion and tractors have considerably lowered the hill . . . and the Somerset fens have long since been drained. What does impress one, though, is how small the site is: about 365 paces long and 50 paces across" - about the size of a football field. Given the confined space at Athelney, Abels calculates that Alfred probably had at most one hundred men with whom to begin the reconquest of Wessex, which makes the king's accomplishment all the more remarkable. Even when it is unclear whether such personal visits were undertaken, Abels' ability to characterize setting is superb: on the size of Rome to ninth-century English pilgrims, Abels says all of Saxon Southampton (Hamwic), the "greatest commercial town of Wessex," would fit into the Baths of Caracalla. A measurement like this conveys more than any statistic or pages of description.

The book itself covers King Alfred's life and his kingdom's history, but the actual biography is really just the skeleton around which a lot of broader, more circumstantial evidence is set out. This is pretty much a common format for biographies of medieval (and earlier) subjects where sources are often scarce. Alfred is probably easier than many to deal with as her had a contemporary biographer, his will survived, as did his law code and some of his own translations of biblical and other works. It's an impressively detailed work and it's thoughtful (and well thought out) - his conclusions seem to be based on a sound basis without making wild leaps of conjecture - for example, in his discussion of Alfred's illness - the "agonizing infirmity" Alfred suffered throughout his life - Abels refers to modern interpretations of the king's affliction as Crohn's disease, but admits that it can only ever be "an attractive possibility" given the state of the evidence.

He also devotes a separate appendix to assessing claims against the authenticity of Asser's Life of Alfred: this is a fair and thoughtful consideration of the arguments of V. H. Galbraith and Alfred Smyth, arguments which Abels rejects. Elsewhere, he alerts readers to the existence of debates and offers a summary of rival positions or qualifications of standard positions (e.g., on extrapolating from dies to estimate circulation of coinage). All information that I, as a reader, found both interesting and relevant. The book itself is, if you're interest in the subject, both clearly structured and interesting (I was going to say fun, but that really depends on you as the reader....). Abels also has a good sense of humour which comes through here and there - for example, he sums up the account of Alfred's ninth-century delegation to "India" - a perplexing event given the times - with a small dose of Wordsworth on the subject. "But," he opines, "as the better Victorian scholars realized, Alfred as a prefigurement of Clive was too good to be true," and Abels offers W. H. Stevenson's conclusion that it was Edessa, and (alas for later imperialists) not "British" India, to which Alfred was directing England's attention.

The book has been cleanly produced with a minimum of typos and editing errors, and with useful maps, a genealogy, and a guide to further reading.

Alfred the Great is one of England's greatest kings , and these book deals with every aspect
of alfred life and his kingdom .. my only criticism is the book sometimes get dry ! its not an easy
read that goes like a novel , Alfred the Great : War , ... is completely scholarship book and the
author had done a perfect job from that point of view .

I enjoyed this book and, unlike some others, was engrossed by the military expeditions of Alfred the Great. The author gives enough information that one can well imagine how incredible it was indeed to fight off the Vikings. Further, the defensive works and the creation of the burghs led to modern economic England, and this point is brought out quite well.

Having read both Pollard's biography of Alfred and that of Abels, I much prefer the latter. Both try to bring Alfred to life for the reader but Abels brings more historical detail into the narrative and, to me anyway, less of an attempt to imagine often obscure motives or scenes. Also, unlike some biographies, the details in this book add to the narrative rather than distract from it. Abels is simply a very effective writer and historian who gives us what Alfred did in the context of a well-developed and well-researched setting. The writing flows smoothly and the reader becomes immersed in the times. I found Abels' biography to be an enjoyable reading experience about one of the pivotal people in Western history.

"Lordship for Alfred was the force that held together the political world and through a hierarchy of authority connected the temporal world with the spiritual...At the apex of the chain of lordship stood God and below Him the king." This book brings us to a time when the nascent English culture and population seemed Providentially-ordered and as seen through the eyes of its king at the time, Alfred. Abels seems to not draw as strict a conclusion as Pollard as to the reasons for Alfred's temporary dethronement but his insight on the full range of daily activities and the operational imperatives of the West Saxon royal court, provide a better view of Alfred's kingdom, at least to this reader. One of the finer points that Abels paints as the backdrop to Alfred's reign and personality, missed in other reviews, was the fact that the House of Cerdic engaged in a policy of conspicuous out-breeding with leading Mercian, Kentish and continental (Carolingian French) noble houses. On the face of it, this was done to unite the various aristocracies in Wessex, Mercia and Kent in the common cause of defeating the invading Viking armies. What we forget is that this gradual process of noble hybridization over several hundreds of years produced unusual capabilities in Cerdic's descendants, which manifested in the intelligence, innovation, dynamism and complexity of Alfred, Edward and Athelstan and other descendants of this royal dynasty and their parallel offshoots.

It is remarkable, for instance, to find a dynasty in the so-called "Dark Ages" that was capable of ruling Wessex and then England for nearly 500 years, who were personally responsible for the re-conquest of the Danelaw and multiple innovations in military, economic, legal and educational spheres, which culminated ultimately in the establishment of the kingdom of England before the Norman invasion. Their direct descendants (among them William Shakespeare) continued to make dramatic impacts on the economic and social milieu of the kingdom even after their ancient 'election' to kingship seemed to pass into remembrance. Not surprisingly, the present English royal family can claim some of its authenticity through its genetic affiliation with the original Wessex-English royal dynasty that Alfred represented through their descent from Edward the Exile's daughter, Margaret of Wessex.