Annie Whitehead – författare

Many people know about Wessex, the ‘Last Kingdom’ of the Anglo‑Saxons to fall to the Northmen, but another kingdom, Mercia, once enjoyed supremacy over not only Wessex, but all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. At its zenith Mercia controlled what is now Birmingham and London ‒ and the political, commercial paramountcy of the two today finds echoes in the past.Those interested in the period will surely have heard of Penda, Offa, and Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians ‒ but remarkably there is no single book that tells their story in its entirety, the story of the great kingdom of the Midlands.Historically, the records are in two halves, pre- and post-Viking, in the way they have been preserved. Pre-Viking, virtually all the source material was written by the victims, or perceived victims, of Mercian aggression and expansion. Post-Viking, the surviving documents tend to hail from places which were not sacked or burned by the Northmen, particularly from Wessex, the traditional enemy of Mercia. The inclusion of those records here allows for the exploration of Mercia post-924.Mercia ceased to be a kingdom when Alfred the Great came to power, but its history did not end there. Examining the roles of the great ealdormen in the anti-monastic reaction of the tenth century, through the treachery of Eadric Streona in the eleventh, and the last, brave young earls who made a stand against William the Conqueror, this book shows the important role the Mercians played in the forging of the English nation.

We all love a good murder story. Historian and author Annie Whitehead has collated around 100 cases in Anglo-Saxon England, from regicides to robberies gone wrong, and from personal feuds to state-sanctioned slaughter, examining their veracity and asking what, if anything, they can tell us about the motives of those who recorded them and about Anglo-Saxon governance and society.The records contain many stories of murder, some of which include details of witchcraft and poisoning, or of betrayal of the worst kind, leaving us with the impression that this period was one of lawlessness and rebellion. But how many of these tales are true, and how do they square with a period known to have had lengthy, detailed law codes and harsh punishment for unlawful killing? Was the ‘Viking’ practice of killing by blood eagle – with reference to King Aelle of Northumbria, an alleged victim – a myth or real?Annie Whitehead also makes a few accusations herself – invoking the old adage that there is no smoke without fire…