Whoah! What an amazing time Ness, Heather and I had 'up north'! Huge thanks to Angela from Fenix Flames for inviting us. Thursday we hit the road early (getting up before the sun), stopping for breakfast and a long chat at a service station. We seem to be becoming incredibly familiar with service stations these days! Then onwards to Mansfield. We stayed in a good old Travelodge for a couple of reasons; they are reasonably priced with clean rooms and good facilities. But

by Ben Patterson For the beginning of the next unofficial saga in our story, we’ll be going far, far back, much further back than the Norsemen. Rather than focusing on a chain of events as we did in the Viking story arc, we will instead be focusing on one particular state – the Roman Republic. Most are familiar with the Empire (hopefully through historical research and not the TikTok trend), but the Republic is an often-overlooked and crucial part of the history of the world’

by Ben Patterson Following on from the last instalment: Cnut The Great Our last instalment covered the Danelaw, from its zenith under Cnut the Great to its waning as the reign of Edward the Confessor began in 1042. One would not be remiss to think of this as the end of the Viking Age, but that would come twenty-four years later, in the fateful year of 1066 – the year when the fate of England was set, when the King of England desperately fought to protect his people from being