Category:
Action,
Adults,
Classic,
Historical FictionLanguage:
EnglishKeywords:
Alfred the Great Saxons Uhtred VikingsWritten by Bernard Cornwell
Read by Jamie Glover, Richard Armitage, Stephen Perring, Tom Sellwood
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 56 Kbps
Unabridged
Bernard Cornwell - The Saxon Chronicles
1. The Last Kingdom
Read By: Tom Sellwood / 12:55
This book is set in England during the reign of King Alfred. Uhtred is an English boy, born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria. Orphaned at ten, he is captured and adopted by a Dane and taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtred’s fate is bound up with Alfred, King of Wessex, who rules over the only English kingdom to survive the Danish assault. The struggle between the English and the Danes and the strife between Christianity and paganism is the background to Uhtred’s growing up. He is left uncertain of his loyalties but a slaughter in a winter dawn propels him to the English side and he will become a man just as the Danes launch their fiercest attack yet on Alfred’s kingdom.
2. The Pale Horseman
Read By: Tom Sellwood / 14:30
Uhtred, Northumbrian born, raised a Viking and married to a Saxon, is a formidable warrior, and he, together with the thoughtful and pious Alfred, Alfred’s family and a few of Uhtred’s companions, are apparently all that remain of the Wessex leadership after a disastrous truce. Defeated comprehensively by the Vikings, Alfred and his Saxon followers seek refuge in Athelney, a tidal swamp and all that is left of Alfred’s kingdom.
3. The Lords of the North
Read By: Richard Armitage / 12:00
The year is 878 and Wessex is free from the Vikings. Uhtred, the dispossessed son of a Northumbrian lord, helped Alfred win that victory, but now he is disgusted by Alfred’s lack of generosity and repelled by the king’s insistent piety. He flees Wessex, going back north to seek revenge for the killing of his foster father and to rescue his stepsister, captured in the same raid. He needs to find his old enemy, Kjartan, a renegade Danish lord at his stronghold of Dunholm.
4. Sword Song
Read By: Jamie Glover / 5:46
Sword Song continues the story of Uhtred, the Saxon warrior who is a reluctant ally of Alfred the Great. This story, which occurs some five years after the events described in Lords of the North, tells how Alfred’s forces evict the Danes from London. Wessex, Alfred’s kingdom, has survived the great Viking assaults and now, with Uhtred as a leader, the West Saxon forces begin the campaigns of conquest that will end with a new kingdom called England.
5. The Burning Land
Read By: Stephen Perring / 10:59
This novel, the fifth in the magnificent series of England’s history, tells of the final assaults on Alfred’s Wessex.