Now, I might be the only person who hasn’t quite realised the significance of next year in terms of the history I write about – but well, it’s better to be late than miss it all together.
2016 is the millennial anniversary of a fair few major events that take place at the end of King Aethelred II’s reign. The much maligned Aethelred meets his death on 23rd April, Cnut is busy causing ‘bother’ throughout, well almost everywhere if you believe the Anglo Saxon Chronicle – in Mercia, around London, there are battles at Penselwood and Sheraton, the great battle of Assandun takes place on 16th October, ‘another’ battle possibly takes place quite soon afterwards, and after all that there’s the Ola’s Island Accord/Peace of Olney which splits England between Edmund (Aethelred’s second oldest son) and Cnut with Cnut taking Mercia and more than likely Northumbria, and Edmund keeping hold of the family lands in Wessex, and that’s just from a brief read through of my own timeline that I’ve been constructing as I research.
People more astute than I am have been arranging a number of historical conferences up and down the country in the UK. To date I know of one in London, one in Cambridge (in fact a series in Cambridge where one has taken place, one is due in September and then another next year), one in Nottingham and now one in Edinburgh as well (and I know of at least one other, but I’ve mislaid the details). The only real problem I can foresee is that at some point I might need to go to work in 2016!!
10th March – 13th March http://www.nmmc.co.uk/index.php?/what…
June 9th-10th
http://www.anglosaxons2016.net/about….
June 27th- July 2nd
https://nottingham.ac.uk/research/gro…
6th-9th July https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cnut-conference
As I find more links I’ll share them, but if you know of any please let me know. I also know from a quick ‘google’ that it’s not only conferences in the UK that are planned so never fear if you live elsewhere.
And for historical fiction fans there’s also the Historical Novel Society conference taking place in Oxford at the beginning of September.
It’s going to be a busy year!
M J Porter 