The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom

by David Woodman

The First King of England, by Cambridge historian David Woodman, tells the story of Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, who unified the kingdoms that make up today’s England after defeating the Viking kingdom of York in 927. There’s not much of a contemporary narrative source about Æthelstan’s life, so this book is a careful piecing together of other sources and evidence, making for a really interesting read about late 9th-, early 10th-century Britain.