As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.

Home / Books / Never Greater Slaughter
Never Greater Slaughter cover

Book

Never Greater Slaughter

by Michael Livingston

Book 1 in the Battle Trilogy series.

Buy the book from:

4.5(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.