There really was a man called Uhtred who was Lord of Bebbanburg, but we know almost nothing about him. The hero of The Last Kingdom is part fictional and part real. Instead Wessex expanded until, under Alfred’s grandson, the new nation emerged. When Alfred the Great was stranded in the Somerset marshes it seemed that Saxon Britain was doomed, and that Alfred’s Wessex would be the last Saxon kingdom. It is a story that is curiously ignored, almost as if we assume that England was always there, but the making of England is a tale of vast and savage struggle, and at times that struggle looked hopeless.
It is a tale of endless war and at the end of it, in the early years of the 10th Century, a new nation is born England. But among the Saxons I was another Saxon, and among the Saxons I did not need another man's generosity.The Last Kingdom is the story of a nation’s making. Yet pride grows in Uhtred: "I understood that among the Danes I was as important as my friends, and without friends I was just another landless, masterless warrior. His Celtic mistress foretells victory for Alfred, but Uhtred can scarcely believe that the bedraggled king, camped in isolated marshes with a handful of supporters, can repel the invaders and unite England.
But when the Danes invade Wessex, Uhtred's loyalties are further divided. But Uhtred sees a better chance of recovering his lost estate if he finds a way to join the Danes, who raised him and whose simple life of "ale, women, sword, and reputation" he finds more congenial than Alfred's Christian piety and military caution. Logically, Uhtred should now ally himself with Alfred, whose Wessex kingdom alone has successfully resisted Danish control. 877, and the dispossessed Northumbrian noble Uhtred has just routed the Danes in a battle at Cynuit in southern England. Summary: Outnumbered Saxon forces continue battling Danish invaders in this sequel to The Last Kingdom.
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