Nobility and Fortune England in the Short Tenth Century

Noble Fortunes is the story of how, between 899 and 975, England was transformed from an idea into a kingdom. It is the story of the unification of a nation. It is also the story of a royal family, with a shadowy patriarch and a warrior princess and a dissolute reprobate. It is the story of a deeply principled archbishop and a deeply unprincipled archbishop. It is a story of heroic deeds and squalid misdeeds. Above all, it is the story of an ongoing contest for power: between rival candidates for the throne, between Crown and Church, between north and south, and between the English and the Norse.

T.D. Asch is also the author of The Century of Calamity: England in the long Eleventh Century. He read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford and has taught history in secondary schools for fifteen years. He has two children and currently lives and teaches History at Wrekin College in Shropshire.