The first book in a brand new series The Last Kingdom is set in England during the reign of King Alfred. Uhtred is an English boy born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria. Orphaned at ten he is captured & adopted by a Dane & taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtreds fate is indissolubly bound up with Alfred King of Wessex who rules over the only English kingdom to survive the Danish assault. The struggle between the English & the Danes & the strife between christianity & paganism is the background to Uhtreds growing up. He is left uncertain of his loyalties but a slaughter in a winter dawn propels him to the English side & he will become a man just as the Danes launch their fiercest attack yet on Alfreds kingdom. Marriage ties him further still to the West Saxon cause but when his wife & child vanish in the chaos of the Danish invasion Uhtred is driven to face the greatest of the Viking chieftains in a battle beside the sea. There in the horror of the shield-wall he discovers his true allegiance. The Last Kingdom like most of Bernard Cornwells books is firmly based on true history. It is the first novel of a series that will tell the tale of Alfred the Great & his descendants & of the enemies they faced Viking warriors like Ivar the Boneless & his feared brother Ubba. Against their lives Bernard Cornwell has woven a story of divided loyalties reluctant love & desperate heroism. In Uhtred he has created one of his most interesting & heroic characters & in The Last Kingdom one of his most powerful & passionate novels.