I’m really enjoying lounging around and watching these documentaries. Alfred and his successors created a unified Anglo-Saxon England after a century of struggle against the Vikings. They built the country the last two generations of liberals have taken for granted and squandered.
Did you ever get into “The Last Kingdom” tv series? I watched the first season and a bit of the second before finding it all a bit repetitive and giving up.
The series of children’s British history books I read as a kid focused much more on the period from the Norman invasion on, so the Anglo-Saxon period was always a huge gap in my knowledge of Britain. Unfortunately, every time I’ve tried to remedy this, the lack of any serious advances or interesting wars have meant that I get bored before ever learning much. So I thought watching that tv series might help sustain my interest for a little longer – which it did, but not by much.