Timeline of principal events

• 894 - possibly the year of Æthelstan’s birth

• 899 - death of King Alfred the Great (Æthelstan’s grandfather) and accession of Edward the Elder (Æthelstan’s father)

• 900 - Edward the Elder is consecrated king (8 June, at Kingston-upon-Thames?)

• 918 - death of Æthelflæd, the ‘lady of the Mercians’, Æthelstan’s aunt, who had been responsible for raising Æthelstan while he was growing up

• 924 - death of Edward the Elder (17 July); Æthelstan accedes as ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’

• 925 - Æthelstan consecrated king at Kingston-upon-Thames (4 September)

• 926 - Æthelstan meets Sihtric, viking king in York, at Tamworth in Mercia (30 January) and arranges a marriage alliance between Sihtric and his unnamed full sister

• 927 - death of Sihtric; Æthelstan conquers Northumbria and creates the ‘kingdom of the English’ for the first time; he then marches further north to Eamont Bridge, where he receives the submission of various rulers (12 July)

• 933 - death of Edwin, Æthelstan’s half-brother, under mysterious circumstances

• 934 - Æthelstan goes to war against the Scots in Alba

• 937 - the Battle of Brunanburh

• 939 - Æthelstan dies at Gloucester (27 October) and is subsequently buried in Malmesbury Abbey