A brilliant depiction of the golden age of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia – landscapes, peoples, conflicts, power structures, and political geography. The eighth century has long been neglected in England's history: a shadow between Bede's death and Ælfred's triumphs. However, before Wessex's dominance, the kingdom of Mercia – which stretched across a wide region of central England – was the vibrant heart of a kingdom that discovered means to exert central political authority for the first time since the Roman Empire.

This power was used to build trade networks and markets, develop economic and cultural connections with the continent, and lay the groundwork for a coordinated defense system, which Ælfred would reconstruct at the end of the ninth century.

Two kings, Æthelbald (716–757) and Offa (757–796), dominate the political scene of Mercia's emerging power. During their reigns, monasteries became centers of royal patronage, economic activity, and trade. Offa built the magnificent dyke along the borders of the hostile Welsh kingdoms, and more subtly, spread his message of political superiority through coins bearing his image.

But Æthelbald and Offa built something with an even more significant legacy – a geography of mid-century England. They devised a set of tensions between royalty, land ownership, and the church that would evolve dramatically at the dawn of the Viking Age.

In this new series of stories about Early Medieval Britain, Max Adams reconnects the worlds of Oswald, Bede, and Ælfred in an absorbing study of the landscape, politics, and society of an exciting century.