THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NICK CROWSON

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

Book Review, April, 2017

The front cover depicts the lead character now portrayed in a BBC programme. This series of nine books now takes its name from this first work, 'The Last Kingdom', it was formerly called 'The Warrior Chronicles'.

This work is 333 pages long and includes a glossary of place names mentioned in the book. This is significant as the place names as they existed in Anglo-Saxon times were very different than they are today. The list of Anglo-Saxon place names is listed against the place name we use today. Cornwell takes the names as given for Alfred the Great's reign from 871-899 in the 'Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names'. Other important preliminary information is depicted by way of a map of Britain, with these place names given.

The work is an historical novel, based around the Viking invasions of Britain in the late ninth century. The central character is Uhtred; introduced as a child, who is spared and captured by the invading Danes and brought up as one of their own, by Ragnar, the leader of the Danish attack against York.

Dates are not given in the novel as some of the recorded events are not chronologically presented exactly. That said many of the name mentioned where real people whose actions are recorded in the two prime sources of information at the time: namely, The 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicles' and Asser's 'Life of King Arthur'. These include bothe the Vikings Ubba, halfdan, guthrum and Ivar the Boneless and the Saxons King Arthur, Aethelwold, Odda and priest Asser.

The title refers to the last last kingdom of Saxon England, left to fight the Vikings, after the subjection of Anglia and Mercia. This work accounts for real sieges and battles that occurred at York, Nottingham and Cynuit in Wessex and skirmishes across the four kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex. Later works recount later battles with the Norsemen during the reign of King Arthur.

Indeed, in the wider context of the novel, this series is about how in King Arthur's reign, the English state was maintained against the threat from the pagan invaders.