King Alfred: The Fact and the Fantasy - A new weekend course at Farncombe for 2011

With Tim Porter 21 - 23 January 2011.

Soldier, scholar, reformer – that is an unusual combination at the best of times. For a hereditary ruler, you’d be lucky to find it once in a thousand years. Yet Alfred stepped into English History at its moment of worst crisis, and deployed these qualities to memorable effect. Today, we must try to decide why, when and how! This course aims to unpick the threads and reveal the real Alfred. We also look at his reputation, trying to understand why every subsequent age has needed to re-invent him in its own image. Issues to be examined include: How far can we trust the original sources? How much of Alfred’s image was self-created? What was the extent of his scholarship? Where did the decisive battles take place? Using slides, maps and even music, we also look at the strange statues and monuments whereby later generations turned man into myth, and the haunting landscapes which still survive.


King Alfred: The Fact and the Fantasy - History, Family History & Architecture