I have been travelling overseas with family, and so I didn’t have many opportunities to listen to podcasts, and those that I did listen to were mainly on current affairs (e.g. The Rest is Politics UK and US) and so not really worth recording.
The Rest is History The Road to 1066. One of the few books that I had bought for me as a child was a poetry book about 1066 which I think must have been 1066 and All That. I can’t for the life of me work out why I wanted that book, or how I even knew about it. Nonetheless, I have always been aware of that 1066 was an important date. This 4 part series is right down Tom Holland’s alley, as he wrote the book Millenium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom which looks at the turn of the first millenium, and he takes the running in these podcasts. Taking from ‘The Rest is History’ page (largely because I have lost my own notes), Episode 548: The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)The Norman Conquest of 1066, culminating in the legendary Battle of Hastings, is perhaps the greatest turning point in the history of the English nation. It was a year that changed the fate of England forever, forging empires, and settling continents. And yet, despite its infamy and significance, the true nature of those totemic events are often forgotten. So what happened in the build up to the Battle of Hastings? The dramas of 1066 were set in motion by a succession crisis in 975 AD, following the death of King Edgar. England by that time was the wealthiest and best run government in Northern Europe, a kingdom of united English speaking peoples, established by Alfred the Great and his successors. Following the mysterious death of Edgar’s first son, Edward, his second son, Æthelred – later known as ‘The Unready’ – took the throne. For many years his kingdom flourished, until disaster struck: the Vikings returned to reign terror upon the Anglo-Saxon people, under the leadership of the terrifying Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway. With his coffers straining, his people enslaved, and his lands shrinking, Æthelred, now wed to the foreign Emma of Normandy, finally decided to take drastic action, and weed the Vikings out once and for all. So it was that with the dawning of the millennium, a terrible, bloody massacre began….
And then in Episode 549: The Road to 1066 The Revenge of the Vikings Pt 2 Following the bloody St Brice’s Day Massacre, of the 13th of November 1002, which saw King Æthelred brutally exterminating the Danes from England, the Vikings were hungry for revenge. None more so than the terrifying Scandinavian King, Sweyn Forkbeard. Having capitalised on his famous father, Harold Bluetooth’s unification of Norway and Denmark, through his aggressive christianisation of the formerly pagan peoples there, Sweyn had built up a formidable force. It was this power that Æthelred had unwisely taunted, underestimating the might of the Danes. He would pay the price only a few short months later when Sweyn’s terrible fleet landed at Wilton Abbey in Wessex – one of the greatest symbols of the House of Alfred the Great – to bleed England dry, and destroy her King. Time and time again, from this date onwards, Sweyn’s Danish raids would devastate England, even going so far as to lock the Archbishop of Canterbury in a cage…by 1013 Æthelred’s reign was essentially over, his family having fled to Normandy, and England under Danish rule. But then, the death of Sweyn Forkbeard would change everything, setting in motion another titanic war of succession, this time pitting the Scandinavian Cnut against Æthelred’s son Edmund Ironside.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 