Andrew Staden

Ancient Cantabrigian unconnected to the local college with a lifelong interest in English history, especially the Dark Ages, better known to scholars as the Early Medięval Period. Reveals that Alfred the Great, the primary cynosure of all Dark Age studies, was illegitimate, that the Battle of Ethandun raged in Somerset rather than Wiltshire and that Alfred may have been descended from the saintly King Oswald of Northumbria. Tomes include biographies of King Alfred the Great, King Edward the Elder and King Ęthelstan as well as a ‘pamphlet’ on the Battle of Ethandun. These efforts are read in Italy, Spain, Brazil, France, Japan and Germany as well as the ubiquitous UK and US. Thinking about doing justice to Ęthelflęd given all the nonsense written about her but currently struggling to make sense of the middle of the tenth century and its five transitory kings from Edmund to Edward the Martyr and the religious revolution of Dunstan, Oswald and Ęthelwold in train at the time. This, he says, will be the subject of his next book but has no idea when it will be finished. Otherwise a fan of P G Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, the Rolling Stones and everything in between.