The battle of Brunanburh: new light on an old mystery
6:30pm - 8:00pm /
Monday 11th April 2016
/ Venue: Lecture Theatre A Central Teaching Hub
Type: Lecture /
Category: Faculty
- 0151 7942280
- Caroline Stanley
- Admission: Free
- Book now
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In this lecture, Michael Wood will look at one of the most famous events of the Viking Age.
In 937 a Viking and North British coalition invaded England, only to be defeated by the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan at a place called ‘Brunanburh’. A generation later the battle was described as ‘The Great War’. Long the subject of controversy, the site is still unidentified, but over the last forty years a consensus has grown that it should be located on the Wirral.
Reviewing the evidence from texts, coins and place names, and setting the war in the context of the politics of the North Sea and North Britain in the Viking era, Michael Wood will offer a new perspective on arguably the most significant battle to have taken place in Britain in the five centuries before Hastings.
Michael Wood is a film-maker, broadcaster, and historian with a special interest in Viking Age history. His recent work in this area includes '"Stand Strong against the Monsters": Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King Æthestan', in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (2007), and 'A Carolingian Scholar in the Court of King Æthelstan', in England and the Continent in the 10th Century (2010.) His study The Lost Life of King Æthelstan will be published next year by Oxford University Press. His most recent TV series is ‘The Story of China’ (BBC Two). He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester.
In 937 a Viking and North British coalition invaded England, only to be defeated by the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan at a place called ‘Brunanburh’. A generation later the battle was described as ‘The Great War’. Long the subject of controversy, the site is still unidentified, but over the last forty years a consensus has grown that it should be located on the Wirral.
Reviewing the evidence from texts, coins and place names, and setting the war in the context of the politics of the North Sea and North Britain in the Viking era, Michael Wood will offer a new perspective on arguably the most significant battle to have taken place in Britain in the five centuries before Hastings.
Michael Wood is a film-maker, broadcaster, and historian with a special interest in Viking Age history. His recent work in this area includes '"Stand Strong against the Monsters": Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King Æthestan', in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (2007), and 'A Carolingian Scholar in the Court of King Æthelstan', in England and the Continent in the 10th Century (2010.) His study The Lost Life of King Æthelstan will be published next year by Oxford University Press. His most recent TV series is ‘The Story of China’ (BBC Two). He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester.