Birth of a nation

Hastings, Agincourt and Waterloo are ingrained in our national psyche, but was a largely forgotten battle in Wiltshire more significant in shaping England and the English? Author Rupert Gavin tells Fergus Collins about King Alfred's last desperate roll of the dice at Edington

- Photos: Joseph Branston

Somehow, it isn’t hard to imagine the scene of battle here, even on a sultry July morning when only the distant growl of a motorbike interrupts the crooning of collared doves. Perhaps it is the quiet. No one is stirring in the Wiltshire village of Edington. There are no signs nor interpretation boards, so the imagination can run unhindered to conjure the din of axes and swords smiting shields and helms, and the cries of men killing and dying. For this is the likely site of the battle of Edington - today a peaceful spot beneath a ridge on the northwestern fringe of Salisbury Plain.

Today, it is a place of anthills, wildflowers and hawthorns, filled with whitethroat and skylark song. But some 1,150 years ago, Alfred, king of the West Saxons, decisively defeated the invading Vikings. As his men slaughtered their foes in a rout driving those enemies back to the Viking fortress at Chippenham to the north, they were, according to my walking companion, historian Rupert Gavin, cementing Edington as “one of the most important locations in the formation and the history of the English nation”.

Without that clash in 878, we would not have the English language, says Rupert - a tongue today spoken by around 1.5 billion people worldwide.

Rupert is also a screenwriter and producer of blockbuster theatre shows in London’s West End and on Broadway in New York. Language and culture mean a lot to him.

It’s quite a claim for a single battle, especially one that is so little known, but Edington has “more significance than Hastings, more significance than Waterloo”, says Rupert. We revere Agincourt because of Shakespeare, whereas the Bard overlooked Alfred, and gave him no speeches.

To understand the importance of that clash, we need to know a little more about events in ninth-century Britain, which at that time was a fragmented land of Saxon, Celtic, British and Pictish kingdoms.