Chalke Talk

The podcast from the Chalke Valley History Festival
Released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings

Chalke Talks for PERIOD: Anglo-Saxons


  • 27. KING ALFRED AND THE BATTLE FOR WESSEX
    ( )

    Broadcaster and historian Professor Michael Wood tells the incredible story of King Alfred’s Battle for Wessex. After defeat at Chippenham, Alfred’s kingdom was reduced to a postage stamp of marshland in Somerset, yet he survived and built his army again, leading them to victory at Ethandun. It is unquestionably one of the great moments in […]

    > PLAY
  • 145. ATHELSTAN
    ( )

    Athelstan is arguably England’s greatest monarch and here best-selling and award- winning author Tom Holland tells the truly amazing story of how Athelstan built on the foundations of his grandfather and mother to become the first King of a united England.

    > PLAY
  • 176. WHY THE ANGLO-SAXONS MATTER
    ( )

    Acclaimed historian and broadcaster Michael Wood tells fascinating tales from our early history: Augustine of Canterbury and the coming of Christianity, Theodore of Tarsus, the golden age of Northumbria, the Lady of the Mercians, Alfred, Athelstan, and the Norman Conquest; stories of men and women, kings and peasants, of the beginning of English literature and […]

    > PLAY
  • 185. THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, WESSEX AND THE CHALKE VALLEY
    ( )

    We speak English today; not Celtic, Latin, nor Norman French. England is England because of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Yet we know very little about how it happened. This talk describes astonishing new evidence, hidden in plain sight, spread across the whole length and breadth of England. Some of it in the Chalke Valley near Salisbury.

    > PLAY

More podcasts - latest releases