Shortly before the Second World War an over-the-hill British ex-Minister, out of office and washed-up, began a history of the English-speaking people.
By Guy Crouchback
Of the Ninth Century, the dark heart of the Dark Ages, when every English kingdom but Wessex alone had been conquered by the Vikings and dragged into their barbaric empire of emptiness, he wrote that the fact that, miraculously (perhaps literally miraculously!) Wessex did not succumb was due: “as almost every critical turn of historic fortune has been due, to the sudden appearance in an era of confusion and decay of one of the great figures of history.”
Later generations might find in these words a strange resonance. The man Winston Churchill was writing about was, of course, Alfred the Great.
Read what you will. More than 11 centuries of scholarship and revisionism have failed to find evidence that might threaten to topple Alfred from what Churchill called his “pinnacle of deathless glory.”
Noblest of all English kings, he beat back the Vikings, not only winning final victory after countless shattering defeats, and from a low point as a hunted fugitive in the marshes of Athelnay, but persuading the leader of the Great Viking Army, Guthrum, later known as Athelstan, to not only accept Christianity but to follow it in truth. It was of this victory that Chesterton wrote: “You and I were saved from being savages forever.”
Throughout England, Alfred restored learning which he had found dead, restored the decayed monastic life and monasteries shattered by the Viking raids, introduced new and better laws, translated important works of literature and moral philosophy into English
for the first time, reformed weights
and measures and founded the British Navy.
All this was in spite of a debilitating chronic illness, possibly malaria. Unusually for a great man, he left sons and grandsons of a strength, generosity and wisdom comparable to his own. Though I am ill-qualified to pronounce on such matters, I believe the case for his canonisation could be strong.
Recently, however, the forces of political correctness have begun chipping at Alfred’s memory, at least in his capital of Winchester. It has been reported that Alfred was considered out-of-date, and "Focus Groups" set up to find a more up-to-date image for the town. Ms Eloise Appleby of the Winchester Tourist Board was quoted as saying: "King Alfred represents the past. His image is not forward-looking enough for today’s cut-throat commercial market place. Winchester is a town with many creative artists and new buildings and Alfred doesn’t tell the whole story." Cut throat?
It was Alfred who saw the throats cut, in a very literal sense, as he fought for years against armies of gentry rejoicing in names like Eric Bloodaxe, Thorfinn Raven-Feeder (not to be confused with his professional colleague Thorfinn Skullsplitter), and Sigurd Worm-in-the-Eye. There was, to be fair, one particularly gentle Viking known as “the children’s man,” for his eccentric habit of allowing children to live.
Not only did many people come to Winchester precisely and solely because of its associations with Alfred, Arthur, and other figures of high and heroic nobility, chivalry and romance, whose memory may still inspire and uplift, but it might well be argued that the nobility, piety, valour, goodness, and love of learning and science which