M.J. Porter has developed an enthusiastic readership for her ninth century Saxon Chronicles set in the depths of a divided Britain. She writes action-packed and completely addictive Dark Ages historicals that have readers howling for more.
Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler. And today on Binge Reading, M.J. talks about the books that critics describe as “Game of Thrones meets The Last Kingdom.”
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Things mentioned in this episodeFirst Viking Age: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Viking-people
Lindisfarne: https://www.lindisfarne.org.uk/
King Alfred: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-king-of-Wessex
Dark Age Britain: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Anglo-Saxon-Kingdoms-Dark-Ages/
Bede: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Bede-the-Venerable
Ceolwulf: Last King of Mercia: https://www.britannica.com/place/Wessex-historical-kingdom
The Battle of Brunanburh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brunanburh
King Athelstan: https://www.athelstanmuseum.org.uk/malmesbury-history/people/king-athelstan/
Bernard Cornwell: https://www.bernardcornwell.net/
Uhtred series: https://www.bernardcornwell.net/series/the-last-kingdom-series/
Queen Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aethelflaed
The Last Kingdom BBC series: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08jnzwp
Ealdorman: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ealdorman
Ealdorman Athelwine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelwine,_Ealdorman_of_East_Anglia
Queen Elfride: https://www.history.org.uk/historian/resource/8630/elfrida-the-first-crowned-queen-of-england
Ethelred II: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ethelred-the-Unready
M J Porter: Custard Corpses, https://mjporterauthor.blog/the-custard-corpses-a-delicious-1940s-mystery-is-on-tour-with-the-coffee-pot-book-club/
Michelles Salter: https://www.michellesalter.com/
Sarah Hawkswood: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sarah-Hawkswood/author/B00MLCK41U
Theodore Brun: https://www.theodorebrun.com/
Simon Turney: https://simonturney.com/
Jane Adams: Murder On The Farm, https://www.amazon.com/MURDER-gripping-mystery-twists-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0BL86FQ9Q#:
Where to find MJ Porter onlineWebsite: www.mjporterauthor.com
Twitter or X: @coloursofunison
Introducing historical fiction author M.J. PorterJenny Wheeler: But now here’s MJ. Hello there MJ and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
M.J. Porter: Hello, thank you so much for inviting me on today. I’m really looking forward to our chat.
Jenny Wheeler: MJ you’ve developed a terrific following of historical fiction readers fascinated by the stories of ancient Britain, and we’re talking basically ninth and tenth centuries, mainly Saxon Britain. Tell us first off, what is the appeal of this period for people who haven’t perhaps delved into it before?
M.J. Porter: The appeal of the period for me is that it’s quite exciting. We’re at the very beginning of what would become known as the First Viking Age. We’ve had our attack on Lindisfarne and then the records go a little bit quiet, we don’t hear a lot more, and then all of a sudden in about the 830s we start to get a little bit of a rumble, and therefore, it’s quite exciting.
We haven’t had the great heathen army yet of the 860s. We’ve got this king in Wessex who’s going to be King Alfred’s grandfather, and everybody knows about King Alfred. So, it’s about the buildup to it, what’s going on before, and my particular focus is always almost always Mercia and Mercia at that time.
They’re on the decline, there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of politics. We’ve got the Vikings, we’ve got the politics, we’ve always got problems with the Welsh on the borders. There’s a lot going on and I think there’s a lot there that hasn’t been explored before. So that’s what I’m doing.
This is not the ‘Dark Age’ of BritainJenny Wheeler: Lovely. Now, I think I’m right. This is very much an amateur interpretation. I did do history at university, but not this period. But in popular historical understanding, it’s known as the Dark Ages in a way, isn’t it? I think that’s right. Seen as the interregnum between The Romans and the Normans in a very broad spectrum, but I rather suspect that might be an outdated view.
Tell me if I’m wrong in that. How do you view this period?
M.J. Porter: I’m going to be honest and I’m going to say I don’t necessarily view this as the Dark Ages. I know a lot of people do. And I know even historians latch on to the idea of it being the Dark Ages, especially in popular, historical nonfiction books.
But really, the Dark Age period is what happens after the end of Roman Britain, and before the Saxons come in and we get a flowering of historical writing again, thanks to the works of Bede.
I don’t call it the Dark Ages, but I know a lot of people do. I think once we get past about, ooh, about… the 700s, we’re into a period where we can’t call it the Dark Ages anymore, so I tend not to, but I know a lot of people do, so I used to get very cross about it, and now I try not to get quite so cross about it.
Jenny Wheeler: That we’re particularly talking about today is Book #5 in your Earls of Mercia Chronicles, The Protector Of Mercia. It’s just recently out for those who don’t really understand much about. The political situation in Britain at this point, I think it was more or less enclaves of warlords, all facing Viking attack in various ways, but not managing to unite against the Vikings at this stage.
M.J. Porter: Tell us, first of all, what was actually the Kingdom of Mercia and was it the strongest kingdom at this time or just one of many? So the Kingdom of Mercia at this time, When you look at Saxon England, there tends to be a pattern.
What we have is we have what’s called the Golden Age of Northumberland, and that is really the 7th century. Then we have what they classify as the Supremacy of Mercia, which is the 8th century. And then as we hit the 9th century, we’re coming into the flowering of Wessex, and then Wessex eventually becomes England.
The heart of Mercia is the MidlandsMercia at this time, it’s essentially the Midlands of England. So, if you’ve heard the names of Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham, Lichfield, Tamworth, Repton, they’re smaller places now, but if you’re going back in time and you’re talking about the Kingdom of Mercia, they’re really important.
So that was Mercia, so we’ve got the Welsh to the west, and we’ve got the East Angles, which was another kingdom to the east, and then above it we’ve got Northumberland, and then you’ve got the River Thames, which is not always the boundary, but it’s often the boundary with Wessex, which is to the south.
There were points when Mercia was much bigger than the Midlands, but to as a a rule of thumb, if you want to know where Mercia was, have a look at Birmingham on your map and you’ll see the area around there. The Mercian name still persists. We’ve got things like the West Mercian police and every so often it will crop up in things as well.
So the name’s still there. You just have to search for it a little bit.
Jenny Wheeler: And I know in the Protector of Mercia, Londinium comes into it. Who actually was controlling Londinium at this time?
M.J. Porter: So Londinium’s a really interesting one. Essentially it should have been Mercia at this time because it was on the northern border of the Thames. Wessex always seems to have too much interest in what’s going on in Londinium, or Londonia, or there’s a number of names for it.
At this time it should have been Mercian, it was mostly Mercian, but then every so often we’ve got a Wessex king that likes to try their luck. and come into London. There’s loads and loads of research about London at the time. Whether it was as important as we perhaps think it was, it’s difficult to actually get your head around.
Isel – the hero of the Earls of Mercia seriesWhat they do know is that we had. what they called Lundenwick, and that was a market settlement, not in the Roman ruins, it’s to the side of it because apparently the Roman ruins, the walls would have still been standing, so they wouldn’t have had access to the riverfront of the Thames, so they couldn’t have traded, and it was a wick, which means market, so that’s what they were doing.
It was just a big trading center and I did find out some quite interesting information about the Thames and there’s a lot of discussion, I don’t understand all of it, about how easy it would have been to get boats up and down the River Thames at this time because I think we just assumed that, oh yes, the Vikings would just sail up there but maybe not all the time, apparently it’s very seasonal.
It was easier to do when it was winter than when it was summer, so there’s assumptions that we make and they’re not always right.
Jenny Wheeler: Now the main character in the Earl of Mercia books is Icel. And he’s a very important character. We won’t tell too much about his background because it’ll spoil the process of the stories, but does he relate to any real historical character?
M.J. Porter: To be honest, he doesn’t. Icel is actually a much-loved character from a series that I’ve written that takes place about 40 years later. And when my publisher approached me and said, we really love this.
We want you to do something with it. I was a bit like, Ooh, I don’t know what to do.
Now I’ve written into this character of Icel, this really great, it was really great when I needed to think of a new series, little thing that he does where they have these big battles and they’re all going yeah we’ve won and he just comes over and he’s yeah if you think that’s good you should have seen what I did when I was younger.
I’ve written his backstory based on what he then tells these fellows when he’s an older man. I have since discovered that the name that I chose for him is very good because there is an Icel who’s in the genealogy for the Mercian kings.
The Last Kings series -Mercia in the ninth centuryHe’s there right at the top, so he’s got a good name and I made lots of good decisions when I created him, which I’m very grateful for.
Jenny Wheeler: Now that series that you’ve just mentioned, what was that series?
M.J. Porter: I call it the Last King series, but that’s actually what the first book is called. So it’s really called The Mercian Ninth Century.
It’s not a particularly exciting title, but it was supposed to be about Mercia’s last king, and it was supposed to be one book, and it became this series.
It got away with me, as my writing tends to do, so I refer to it as both, but yes, it’s, so it’s about Ceolwulf, which is not the right way to say it, I think you should call him Chullwulf, but I’ve got used to calling him Ceolwulf, and he was Mercia’s last king, so that was where the title came from.
Jenny Wheeler: You’ve also got a second instalment in another series coming out this year, I noticed, and it’s set a hundred years further on, around about 934, and that one’s called The Kings of War, and in book two, England is now united as one kingdom, but they’re still facing off to Scotland in the north, and to the Dublin Norse people in Ireland. Tell us about that one.
M.J. Porter: Okay, this one’s about the Battle of Brunanburh, which took place in 937. So, yes, England is united. We’ve got our young King Athelstan, who is the grandson of King Alfred. His father was king after Alfred. And then he becomes king after his father and essentially the Viking Norse, the Dublin Norse, they’ve been in retreat.
They’ve not been causing problems for a long time. the period is often categorized as a time of peace, but it actually isn’t.
The idea behind the book was to look at not just England, but Britain as a whole. We’ve got the Welsh kingdoms, we’ve got the Scots kingdom, we’ve got the Irish as well, and what’s going on, what leads to this massive battle in 937 called Brunanburh, which a lot of people have never heard of or they hadn’t heard about it until Bernard Cornwell wrote his Uhtred books, and he took him to Brunanburh.
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[data-style="minimal"]{padding:20px;width:100%;position:relative;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-header{margin:0 0 27px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-subheader{margin:18px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee{font-size:13px;margin:10px 0 15px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee > p{margin:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-powered-by-convertkit-container{margin-bottom:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-fields{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;margin:25px auto 0 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field{min-width:220px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 0 15px 0;-webkit-flex:1 0 100%;-ms-flex:1 0 100%;flex:1 0 100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} History scant on The Battle of Brunanburh
It’s becoming more and more well known, the idea of the book is we get the build up, then we get the battle, and then unfortunately, and I don’t think I’m going to be doing any spoilers here because people should know, Athelstan, almost at the height of his powers, he dies. And then everything seems to reset again.
This series is what happens to Athelstan and then what happens to his successor afterwards. It’s fascinating. It’s hard to do because we don’t have any historical records that tell us about what happened in Britain at the time. We have ones for Scotland and we have ones for Ireland.
We have ones for the Welsh and obviously we have the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, but nobody’s putting all the bits together and saying this happened because of that. It’s fascinating to play with it, and see what brought about this huge battle.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. So how does that part relate to the battle between Mercia and Wessex? Was Athelstan a successor of any of those kingdoms?
M.J. Porter: Well, Athelstan’s fascinating. He’s really interesting. You’re going to have to excuse me here. It might be a little bit of a long explanation. Athelstan, we are told was raised in Mercia by his aunt, Lady Athelflaed of Mercia, who’s very famous because his father remarried and for whatever reason, they didn’t want him around at that time.
So he goes to Mercia, he’s raised there. When the Lady Athelflaed dies, his father comes in and. essentially takes Mercia. And then his father dies, but Athelstan is very well known in Mercia. So when his father dies, it’s said that the Mercians said, actually, we want Athelstan as our king.
‘Action-packed and completely addictive’And so that was good. And then in Wessex, one of his younger brothers was supposed to become king. But unfortunately he died. So then Athelstan came back from Mercia and claimed Wessex as well. So that’s how England was made. So the story is Mercia, then Wessex, and then he started gathering all together the five boroughs as well.
Jenny Wheeler: Now you’re writing, it’s described as “action packed and completely addictive.” And one reviewer described it as being “Game of Thrones meets The Last Kingdom.” Now, for those who may not be familiar with The Last Kingdom, that was a very successful British TV series. I gather it ran from 2015 to 2022, for five seasons.
So it obviously got a following, and based on Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series, as you already mentioned his name. So it’s pretty amazing to be categorized in that kind of company. Do you feel that you live up to it?
M.J. Porter: Oh no, I think that’s really hard. I don’t know. I think because it’s a similar period and it’s a similar outlook on it. We’re looking at the wars and we’re looking at the fighting. I can understand why people do that. It’s great to be categorized there. I read all the Game of Thrones books.
Quite early on in my writing career and what appealed to me about them is he tells a story from different viewpoints all the way through and that’s something that I like doing as well so when I read his books I went oh someone else is doing it that’s all right I can get away with it so that was really good.
Game of Thrones meets The Last KingdomJenny Wheeler: It’s interesting with Game Off Thrones though, because it’s as much fantasy as it is history, isn’t it? I didn’t get into the books and I also didn’t watch the TV series because when I tried to start with it, I found it too violent. I couldn’t watch it.
But when I tried to look it up, I see that opinion varies as to whether it’s the second century or early medieval which is a huge difference in timeframe so obviously, he didn’t stick to one period. Do you find that offensive as an academic historian?
M.J. Porter: I don’t know because I think that sometimes you look at the past and actually there’s a lot of great stories but they don’t join up together and joining them up together is difficult.
If you want to pick and choose and put a bit of the War of the Roses with a little bit of the end of the Roman Empire, then why not?
Because you’re writing fantasy so you can get away with it and it’s appealing. I really enjoyed it, but I would like to say I’ve started reading those books because I thought there were four of them. and I went that’s good I can read a nice fantasy series of four books and of course it’s not four books but it’s longer.
Jenny Wheeler: And I don’t think he’s ever got round to the actual final one, has he?
M.J. Porter: He’s been writing it apparently I think for at least 13 years or something so when Book Five came out I’ve read half of it and I’m not reading the other half until Book Six comes out, because otherwise I’ll forget who all the characters are.
Jenny Wheeler: How important is it for you to follow historical fact as we know it? And do we know much about this period?
M.J. Porter: That is the joy of it. So no, we don’t know much about it. There are more gaps than there are certain facts. It’s quite a complex series to understand. We’re told a certain narrative and that narrative has stuck. And then there’s a lot of academic historians who are unpicking the narrative and saying, this isn’t right.
M J Porter – telling the untold storyThere’s other things that were going on. So I think. We don’t know much. I try and stick to historical fact where I know it. But I also want to tell the story, almost, of the underdogs. I want to tell the bit that people don’t know. As I was saying at the beginning, we know about the Golden Age in Northumberland.
We know about Mercia, when it was great. We know about Wessex. But what about all the other people? What about all the other kingdoms at those same periods? So that’s what I’m trying to do. So I don’t necessarily stick. To what some people might say is historical fact, but I would argue that it’s probably not fact to get around it.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. What set you to writing fiction in the beginning? I did pick up somewhere that you were studying history at university and you became captivated by a particular person, a real life person. Tell us about that.
M.J. Porter: I was studying for my master’s degree, and it’s not called a History Master’s, but I call it History Master. I was doing a slightly to the side of it. And I used to go and love walking down the aisle at the local university and picking up all the books and I read everything.
And then, yes, I discovered this character who’s called Ealdormaine Athel Wine. And he was Ealdormaine in Mercia at the end of the 10th century. And what appealed to me more than anything is he is the beginning of a dynasty that survived until the Norman conquest, and indeed slightly afterwards, but in captivity, unfortunately.
And when you look at the narrative again, this is me playing with the narrative. When we look at it, we’re told about the Godwine family and Earl Godwine, and his son ends up being king and his daughter ends up being queen.
But I was thinking, what about this other side? What about what they were doing.
How did he survive? Because he was there through a lot of kings. His family survived through the kingship of Ethelred the Second, through the Danish Kings on back to when we get Edward the Confessor back. So how did he do it? And that was what appealed to me. He’s a real person. We don’t know a lot about him, and obviously he’s Mercian and I’m a Mercian, so I wanted to write about him and bring him back to the fore.
Queen Elfrida – England’s first QueenSo that was how that started. I never intended to write about him, but I did.
Jenny Wheeler: You’ve also written about the first queen of England, who probably nobody much has heard of, unless they’ve read your books, Elfrida. Now, you wrote a trilogy about her, and she’s described as the first queen of England, not only the first queen, but after Anne Boleyn, the only queen, perhaps, who fell for a married king.
Tell us about her.
M.J. Porter: Lady Elfrida led a fascinating life. She ends up marrying King Edgar, who, if I get this right, would have been Athelstan’s nephew. He’d already been married.
In fact, he has three marriages very quickly. And it’s quite difficult to fit all the children in with the marriages that he has.
But the story is he was married and he fell in love with this beautiful woman. And he broke off one marriage and then they got married and then this is the marriage that sticks.
She’s one known for the fact that she married an already married king. She won him. It was a love match. It’s the way it’s always portrayed.
And I thought why not? This is really interesting. She’s got a very difficult reputation after she dies because apparently, she may or may not have been, I don’t think she was, involved in the murder of her stepson who should have been king after her husband’s death so that her son could then become king.
There’s a lot going on at the time and I think reputation is very… difficult to unpick at this period because it’s all written by religious men.
They’re not going to think much of people being in love and people murdering everybody. I wanted to tell her story the way that I imagined it might have been told.
‘Get thee to a nunnery’That’s what I did with Elfrida. It was a difficult trilogy because the first book is very much romance, but then they’re together and they’re in love and then all these politics take over. Then it became very political. There’s not much. war in it, but there is a lot of backstabbing.
Jenny Wheeler: And did they actually get a divorce? I guess in those days, they were technically Christian, were they,
M.J. Porter: They were Christian. What they used to do, essentially, was if they didn’t want to be married anymore, they would send their discarded wife off to a nunnery, and then she could live in the nunnery.
And our idea of what sort of life she might have had is perhaps swayed by what we think of as life in a nunnery and actually it may have been quite glamorous and very rich and very wealthy. There were royal nunneries that these women went to.
They wrote in a narrative afterwards, saying that she was very religious anyway and didn’t really want to get married and didn’t want to have any children.
She was happy to go and be an abbess of the nunnery and they have a daughter together and she becomes a saint as well, after her death.
She tragically dies quite young. They didn’t necessarily get divorced but there’s a charter that shows that he gave very wealthy gifts to her.
Essentially he bought her off and went “please go over there and behave.”
Jenny Wheeler: And they were almost a little bit of accepting of polygamy for that level of aristocracy?
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