Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men.
King Alfred
In these days spent in Winchester I could feel the thought of King Alfred the King of Wessex in the air and hear his ghostly footsteps in the night.
Alfred was extraordinary for an early medieval king in several respects. He was a particularly wily military commander, successfully keeping the Danes at bay, and he wisely shored up defenses when the enemies of his kingdom were occupied elsewhere. At a time when England was little more than a collection of warring kingdoms, he established diplomatic relations with his neighbors, including the Welsh, and unified a substantial portion of the heptarchy. He displayed remarkable administrative flair, reorganizing his army, issuing important laws, protecting the weak, and promoting learning. But most unusual of all, he was a gifted scholar. Alfred the Great translated several works from Latin into his own language, Anglo-Saxon, known to us as Old English, and wrote some works of his own. In his translations, he sometimes inserted comments that offer insight not only into the books but into his own mind.
The design is a portrait of actor David Dawson who played Alfred in the series ‘The Last Kingdom’.
