With current debate about the stability and durability of the United Kingdom, Ian Hislop felt it was a good time to explore how it was that England, the core of that union, came to be. In this series he tells the story of four great Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, celebrating their golden ages and trying to understand their journey from groupings of assimilated peoples from across the North Sea to powerful kingdoms, and ultimately a single entity.

In spite of a relatively limited written record, it's a period of history that is being constantly re-written, thanks to the impact of new archeological techniques and the rise of the amateur detectorists. Ian hears from authorities on the early medieval period including Michael Wood, Marc Morris, and the British Museum’s curator of Medieval coinage, Gareth Williams, as well as talking to people with local interests in the Anglo-Saxon story.
He's on the look out for ways in which these regional identities have left a mark beyond the occasional use of their names for utility companies or railway services, and he explores the factors that kept the Kingdoms apart but eventually drew them together; common enemies, a unifying language, the church and the residual aspiration to be as the Romans once were.

In today’s programme Ian hears the story of the great Mercian Kings, their power, European ambitions and their eventual defeat at the hands of the Vikings. He also talks to members of today’s Mercian regiment, formed from a number of county regiments to represent a huge swathe of what was once an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. But do the squaddies have a sense of regional Mercian identity?
But most important of all, Ian turns his hand to metal detecting, a pastime that has had a dramatic impact on our knowledge and understanding of the Anglo-Saxon period. Will he unearth valuable Anglo-Saxon coins, or bits of white lead and the odd button?

Producer; Tom Alban Show less