Alfred the Great

And now for something completely different ,,,

Periodically I get an urge to read a biography or two. I just finished a long book about William Randolph Hearst, inspired by catching a flash of Citizen Kane on cable. Fortunately, I can borrow all this stuff from the library on my Kindle. Then I had a notion to learn more about Alfred the Great .

I like French history but I have always found the English equivalent to be more disjointed. Celts Saxons Romans Danes French _  cut-offs and new starts. So I searched the library – nothing but romantic novels. Books are available, of course, at a price – an electronic download now costs as much or more as a paper book. Fortunately there is project Gutenberg, which has massive stores of old writing (out of copyright) of just about anything. So I am using a nice nearly Victorian treatment of the subject .

I haven’t learned a lot about Alfred yet. But I have learned an awful lot about disentangling legend from fact. This historian is at great pains to do so. To be fair, so was the Hearst biographer, but he had only the movie to debunk. Alfred tends to be encrusted like Arthur, or – more appropriately – Charlemagne .

Legend has its place – Shakespeare used it to create immortal literature. But sometimes it is refreshing to sift into dry facts with a historian trying to carefully separate fact from fiction. We could use more of that with our current news .