Never Greater Slaughter

by Michael Livingston Book 1 in the Battle Trilogy series.

First published 2021

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4.4(487)

In 937, Æthelstan’s expanding English kingdom confronted a coalition led by Olaf Guthfrithson and Constantine II of Scotland at Brunanburh. Michael Livingston reconstructs the political alliances, military preparations and competing ambitions that brought several armies together for a battle remembered by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as exceptionally destructive. The victory secured Æthelstan’s authority and became a major stage in the formation of a unified English realm.

The book also investigates the long dispute over where Brunanburh was fought. Livingston combines literary evidence, place-name study, landscape analysis, archaeology and the work of local researchers to argue for a site on the Wirral. By separating what the sources state from later national mythology, he presents both a narrative history of the campaign and a case study in how a lost medieval battlefield can be recovered.