There’s no justice. Alfred’s medium-sized achievements, thanks to his canny commissioning of a praise-packed biography, overshadow that of his more successful successors. Worse still, their fame is also dwarfed by that of the incompetent who came after them: King Aethelred, known as Aethelred the Unready. The nickname sums him up, though apparently ‘unready’ didn’t mean what it sounds like it means, but derives from the Old English word meaning ‘badly advised’, while the name Aethelred means ‘well advised’. It’s a joke – Well-Advised the Badly Advised – and a message to posterity about the
...more
