I just finished reading “The Last Kingdom” and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it. As a biographer of King Alfred and an historian of Anglo-Saxon England, I approached the novel with some trepidation. I tend not to like works of fiction set in the eras that I study and teach because too often the characters are given modern sensibilities alien to the period so that the reader can better relate to them. Although I disagree with some of your interpretations and choices (e.g. on the military organization of ninth-century fyrds and the identification of the ring upon which the vikings swore at Wareham), I was not only entertained by the book but found your representation of King Alfred quite plausible. I liked that you presented him as a complex figure: genuinely (and obsessively) pious and, because of that, anxious about his carnal desires, a determined war leader, a generous but demanding lord, and a shrewd judge of character, who could be manipulative and ruthless if the situation warranted it. I thought that you also handled Alfred’s illness well. I found your unromantic treatment of vikings refreshing. As you comment in your historical note (and as I have also argued in my publications), the term ‘viking’ describes an activity rather than a people or a tribe, which is why I prefer not to capitalize the word. You captured that well in the novel. I look forward to the second and (I suspect) subsequent books in the series. yours, Dr. Richard Abels