Nearly a thousand years ago, a Game of Thrones was played for real across the old Kingdom of England. In the struggle between Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, and Viking Scandinavians, it’s the Battle of Hastings of 1066 that won fame and glory as the seismic moment that ended a dynasty and began another. But a conquest is rarely so simple, and battles both before and after Hastings played pivotal roles in the sculpting of English, British and European destiny.

Our debut series, the English Game of Thrones, begins with a battle exactly 50 years to the week before Hastings – a battle at which a single act of betrayal changed the course of English history – the Battle of Assandun in 1016.

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