The Mercian ChroniclesA brilliant recreation of the golden age of the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Mercia its landscapes, peoples, conflicts, power structures, and political geography. The eighth century has long been a neglected backwater in English history: a shadowland between the death of Bede and the triumphs of lfred. But before the hegemony of Wessex, the kingdom of Merciaspread across a broad swathe of central Englandwas the dynamic heart of a kingship that discovered