I’ve just been catching up with the new Michael Wood history series, which focuses on Alfred the Great and his successors. This week’s episode features one of the most successful war leaders of Saxon England: Alfred’s daughter, Aethelflaed, Lady of Mercia. There have been queens in England since, of course, but none of them have actually been military leaders the way that Aethelflaed was. I suppose if anyone wrote a fantasy novel based on her life a whole bunch of people would complain about how “unrealistic” it was.

The stained glass window is from Worcester Cathedral.

Alfred, of course, is a local hero in these here parts. Somerset was his base during the guerrilla war he fought against the Danes. The defeated Viking leader, Guthrum, was baptised in the small Somerset village of Aller, which is where Kim Newman grew up.

All of which reminds me that I meant to link to this post by Manda Scott on the excellent History Girls blog. In it she talks about how to write battle scenes (in her case in historical novels, but the same applies to fantasy). It is good stuff. If you are writing about battles, it helps to be able to say, “When I fought as part of an Anglo-Saxon battle group…” That’s what I call doing research.