num_pages: 230
description: On a gusty March day in 1016, as King Canute was completing his subjugation of the north of England, he commanded the appearance of the greatest of his northern subjects, Earl Uhtred of Northumbria, at a place called Wiheal, probably near Tadcaster in Yorkshire. Uhtred had been loyal to Canute's predecessor, Ethelred the Unready, but realized that Canute had an overwhelming upper hand, and came with forty retainers to Wiheal to make his submission. But, as Richard Fletcher recounts in his electrifying opening to this book, 'Treachery was afoot'. Uhtred and his men were ambushed and slaughtered by an old enemy of Uhtred's called Thurbrand, with Canute's connivance. 'This act of treachery and slaughter', writes Fletcher, 'set in motion the chain reaction of counter-violence and yet further violence, a bloodfeud that lasted for three generations and almost sixty years, which is the subject of this book.'.
language: English
title: Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England
titlecomplete: Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England
characters: Æthelred the Unready, Edmund Ironside, Uhtred of Nurthumbria, Cnut the Great, Thurbrand the Hold
genres: Historical, British Literature, Medieval History, European History, Nonfiction, Adult, Medieval, Anglo Saxon, History
ratings_count: 175
places: England
publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin Press