The Essay Episodes Available now
Edward the Confessor—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
28/30 Stephen Baxter creates a portrait of the remarkable Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor.
Aethelred the Unready—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
27/30 Simon Keynes discusses the life of the Anglo-Saxon monarch Aethelred.
Episode 26—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
26/30 Historian Pauline Stafford assesses the life of Queen Emma of Normandy.
Cnut the Great—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
25/30 Dr Timothy Bolton presents a portrait of Cnut, son of Sven Forkbeard, the king of Denmark.
Athelstan—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
24/30 A claim for King Athelstan to be reinstated as a more significant historical figure.
The Smith - Gold and Black—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
23/30 Lesley Webster on the life of the smith and his ambivalent status in Anglo-Saxon society.
Wynflaed—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
22/30 Michael Wood on Wynflaed, seen as the first woman in British history to have left a will.
Leoba—Anglo-Saxon Portraits
21/30 Barbara Yorke on Leoba, the 8th-century nun who became a pioneering abbess in Germany.
Tessa Hadley—A Taste for the Baroque
5/5 Tessa Hadley on Henry James's sentences and jokes. Is there such a thing as Baroque prose?
Chloe Aridjis—A Taste for the Baroque
4/5 Mexican novelist Chloe Aridjis discusses the survival of Baroque in her country.
