The Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 are two of the most famous years in English history. But very few people know what happened in 925 or 927AD. Professor David Woodman, the University of Cambridge-based author of The First King of England, a groundbreaking new biography of Æthelstan, is determined to change this and not just with his book. He – and other historians – are planning a fitting memorial for England’s first and unfairly overlooked king.

“As we approach the anniversaries of Æthelstan’s coronation in 925 and the birth of England itself in 927, I would like his name to become much better known. He really deserves that,” says Woodman, a Professor at Robinson College and Cambridge’s Faculty of History.

Woodman is working with other historians* towards a memorial for the king, which could be a statue, plaque or portrait in a location like Westminster, Eamont Bridge (where Æthelstan’s authority in 927 was recognized by other British rulers) or Malmesbury (where he was buried). Woodman is also calling for the history of Æthelstan’s reign to appear more routinely on the school curriculum.

“There has been so much focus on 1066, the moment when England was conquered. It’s about time we thought about its formation, and the person who brought it together in the first place,” Professor Woodman says.

Why isn’t Æthelstan better known?

Woodman’s book, published by Princeton University Press, blames a lack of public relations. “Æthelstan didn’t have a biographer writing up his story,” Woodman says. “His grandfather, Alfred the Great, had the Welsh cleric Asser to sing his praises. And within decades of Æthelstan’s death, a wave of propaganda ensured King Edgar became famous for reforming the church. This completely overshadowed Æthelstan’s earlier revamping of learning and religiosity.”

In modern times, historians have tended to dismiss Æthelstan’s status as England’s first king, on the basis that the kingdom fragmented soon after his death in 939AD. The focus has instead shifted to Edgar. Woodman rejects this argument.

“Just because things broke down after Æthelstan’s death doesn’t mean that he didn’t create England in the first place,” Woodman says. “He was so ahead of his time in his political thinking, and his actions in bringing together the English kingdom were so hard-won, that it would have been more surprising if the kingdom had stayed together. We need to recognise that his legacy, his ways of governing and legislating, continued to shape kingship for generations afterwards.”

Woodman cites a wealth of evidence to resurrect Æthelstan’s reputation.

Military success

“Militarily, Æthelstan was supremely strong,” Woodman says. “He had to be very robust to expand the kingdom and then to defend it.”

Æthelstan had to contend with major Viking settlement in the north and the east. In 927AD, he acquired authority over the Viking stronghold at York, and, in bringing Northumbria within his dominion, became the first to rule over an area recognizable as ‘England’.

As Æthelstan expanded his kingdom, he drew Welsh and Scottish kings into his royal assemblies. Large-scale surviving original diplomas, housed in the British Library, list the very many nobles he compelled to attend. The meetings of Æthelstan’s assemblies must have been incredibly grand affairs, involving hundreds of people in total.

“These Welsh and Scottish kings must have bitterly resented being brought so far out of their territories,” Woodman says. “An incredible tenth-century Welsh poem, The Great Prophecy of Britain, calls for the English to be slaughtered. It’s difficult to date, but it may be a direct response to this expansion of Æthelstan’s power.”

Then, in 937AD, at the famous Battle of Brunanburh, Æthelstan brutally crushed a formidable Viking coalition, supported by Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh, determined to overthrow him.

“Brunanburh should be as well-known as the Battle of Hastings,” Woodman says. “Every major chronicle, in England, Wales, Ireland and Scandinavia took note of this battle, its outcome and how many people were slaughtered. It was a critically important episode in the history of the newly-formed English kingdom.”

Numerous locations have been proposed for the battle. Woodman is confident that it happened at what is now Bromborough on the Wirral. “That location makes sense strategically and the etymology of the name fits,” he says.

Revolution of government

Æthelstan’s most powerful legacy rests in his “revolution of government,” Woodman suggests. Legal documents from Æthelstan’s reign survive in relative abundance and, Woodman argues, take us right to the heart of the type of king he was.

“King Alfred must have been a role model for his grandson,” Woodman says. “Æthelstan saw that a king should legislate and he really did. He took crime very seriously.”

Once Æthelstan had created the English kingdom, royal documents known as ‘diplomas’ (in essence a grant of land by the king to a beneficiary) were suddenly transformed. Formerly short and straightforward, they were transformed into grandiose statements of royal power.

“They’re written in a much more professional script and in amazingly learned Latin, full of literary devices like rhyme, alliteration, chiasmus,” Woodman says. “They were designed to show off, he’s trumpeting his success.”

But Woodman also argues that government became increasingly efficient during Æthelstan’s reign. “We can see him sending law codes out to different parts of the kingdom, and then reports coming back to him about what was working and what changes needed to be made.”

“There is also some of the clearest evidence we have for centralized oversight of the production of royal documents, with one royal scribe put in charge of their production. No matter where the king and the royal assembly traveled, the royal scribe went too.”

Woodman points out that Æthelstan brought England together just as parts of continental Europe were fragmenting. “Nobles across Europe were rising up and taking territory for themselves,” he says. “Æthelstan made sure that he was well placed to take advantage of the unfolding of European politics by marrying a number of his half-sisters into continental ruling houses.”

Learning and religion

Woodman argues that Æthelstan reversed a decline in learning brought by the Vikings and their destruction of churches. “Æthelstan was intellectually curious and scholars from all over Europe came to his court,” Woodman says. “He sponsored learning and was a keen supporter of the church.”

Two of Woodman’s favorite pieces of evidence relate to Saint Cuthbert. The first, the earliest surviving manuscript portrait of any English monarch, appears in a 10^th-century manuscript now cared for by The Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Æthelstan’s head is bowed as he stands before the saint. “Everyone should know about this portrait, it’s one of the most important images in English history,” says Woodman.

The manuscript was originally designed as a gift for the Community of Saint Cuthbert. “Æthelstan had just expanded into Northumbria and this manuscript cleverly includes a life of Saint Cuthbert,” Woodman says. “He was trying to win them over to his cause.”

Woodman felt even closer to Æthelstan while studying the Durham Liber Vitae. Begun in the ninth century, this manuscript chronologically lists the people who had a special connection to the Community of Saint Cuthbert, in alternating gold and silver lettering.

“If Æthelstan is going to appear, he should be many pages in, but in the tenth century someone visited Saint Cuthbert’s Community and wrote ‘Æthelstan Rex’ right at the top. Seeing that was breathtakingly exciting. It’s feasible that someone in his entourage was responsible. We know they visited the Community in 934 and this manuscript may have been on prominent display there, perhaps on its high altar.”

Notes

*The group has been convened by Alex Burghart MP, and incudes the historian-broadcasters, Tom Holland and Michael Wood.

Reference

David Woodman, The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom is published by Princeton University Press on 2^nd September 2025 (ISBN:9780691249490)

The study was published recently in BMC Environmental Health. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of environmental health, was senior author. The study was led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and also included co-authors from other institutions.

The researchers analyzed results from 46 previous studies worldwide that investigated the potential link between prenatal acetaminophen use and subsequent NDDs in children. The researchers used the Navigation Guide Systematic Review methodology — a gold-standard framework for synthesizing and evaluating environmental health data — which enabled them to conduct a rigorous, comprehensive analysis that supported evidence of an association between acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy and increased incidence of NDDs.

The researchers noted that while steps should be taken to limit acetaminophen use, the drug is important for treating pain and fever during pregnancy, which can also harm the developing fetus. High fever can raise the risk of neural tube defects and preterm birth. “We recommend judicious acetaminophen use — lowest effective dose, shortest duration — under medical guidance, tailored to individual risk-benefit assessments, rather than a broad limitation,” they wrote.

In late September, the Food and Drug Administration announced it would issue a letter to clinicians urging them to be cautious about the use of acetaminophen in pregnancy. Baccarelli said he had discussed his study with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the weeks leading up to that announcement and provided the White House team with an statement noting his research found “evidence of an association” between prenatal exposure to acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental disorders. “That association is strongest when acetaminophen is taken for four weeks or longer,” Baccarelli said.

The statement continued: “Further research is needed to confirm the association and determine causality, but based on existing evidence, I believe that caution about acetaminophen use during pregnancy — especially heavy or prolonged use — is warranted.”

Baccarelli noted in the “competing interests” section of the research paper that he has served as an expert witness for plaintiffs in a case involving potential links between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The study was conducted in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles; University of Massachusetts Lowell; and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Funding for this study was provided by the National Cancer Institute (U54CA267776), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R35ES031688), and the National Institute on Aging (U01AG088684).

The Earth’s mantle is a restless, enigmatic engine that powers volcanism, recycles crust, and regulates the long-term evolution of the planet. But one of its most elusive characteristics — the redox state, or the balance of oxidized and reduced chemical species — remains difficult to measure directly. A new study led by Yael Kempe and Yaakov Weiss, from the Hebrew University’s Institute of Earth Sciences, offers a rare glimpse into these deep processes, captured within nano- and micro-inclusions in diamonds from South Africa’s Voorspoed mine.

A Rare Discovery in the Depths

For decades, models and high-pressure experiments have suggested that nickel-rich metallic alloys should stabilize in the mantle at depths of roughly 250-300 km. Yet, natural samples confirming these predictions have been vanishingly scarce.

Working with colleagues from the University of Nevada, the University of Cambridge, and the Nanocenter at the Hebrew University, Weiss’s team has now identified nickel-iron metallic nanoinclusions and nickel-rich carbonate microinclusions preserved inside diamonds that formed between 280-470 km below Earth’s surface. These inclusions represent the first direct evidence of nickel-rich alloys at their predicted depth — a long-sought validation of mantle redox models.

The diamonds’ mineral cargo also includes coesite, K-rich aluminous phases, and molecular solid nitrogen inclusions, providing multiple pressure markers that firmly constrain their origin to the deep upper mantle and shallow transition zone.

Redox Snapshots Frozen in Carbon

The significance of the find goes beyond simple confirmation of theoretical models. The coexistence of nickel-iron alloy and nickel-rich carbonate points to a metasomatic redox-freezing reaction — a dynamic interaction in which an oxidized carbonatitic-silicic melt infiltrated reduced, metal-bearing peridotite. It joins earlier evidence from shallower depths that this is the main mode of formation of natural diamonds.

In this environment, preferential oxidation of iron relative to nickel drove enrichment of the residual alloy in nickel. At the same time, nickel-rich carbonates and diamonds crystallized from the melt. In effect, the diamonds froze a fleeting geochemical moment: the conversion of a reduced mantle rock into a more oxidized, volatile-rich domain and the reduction of carbonates to form diamonds.

“This is a rare snapshot of mantle chemistry in action,” says Weiss. “The diamonds act as tiny time capsules, preserving a reaction that would otherwise vanish as minerals re-equilibrate with their surroundings.”

Implications for Mantle Dynamics and Magmatism

These findings carry broad implications. If localized metasomatic reactions periodically oxidize small portions of the mantle, they may help explain why some inclusions in other superdeep diamonds record unexpectedly high oxidized conditions.

Such processes also shed light on the origins of volatile-rich magmas. The enrichment of mantle peridotite in carbonate, potassium, and incompatible elements during these redox events could prime the mantle for the later formation of kimberlites, lamprophyres, and even some ocean island basalts. In other words, the tiny inclusions in Voorspoed diamonds hint at large-scale links between subduction, mantle redox dynamics, and the generation of magmas that shape continents and bring diamonds to the surface.

Diamonds as Mantle Witnesses

The study underscores the scientific value of diamonds as more than just gemstones. Their inclusions — whether nanometer-scale alloys or high-pressure minerals — offer one of the only natural records of conditions hundreds of kilometers beneath our feet.

Kempe and Weiss’s work marks a milestone: the first natural confirmation of nickel-rich alloys at mantle depths predicted by theory, and a vivid illustration of how the deep Earth’s redox landscape evolves through melt-rock interaction.

As researchers continue to probe these mineral time capsules, we may find that diamonds, once symbols of permanence, are also storytellers of change — bearing witness to the mantle’s hidden chemistry and the processes that continue to shape our dynamic planet.

“We discovered that these Gifted Word Learner dogs can extend labels to items that have the same function or that are used in the same way,” says author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. It’s like a person calling both a traditional hammer and a rock by the same name, says Fugazza.

“The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function,” she says. “So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

The studies took place in the dogs’ natural home environments with their human owners. At the beginning, the dogs spent time getting familiar with verbal labels for two functional groups of objects: pull and fetch. Their owners used these words with specific toys and played with them accordingly even though the toys didn’t share any similar physical features.

Next, the dogs were tested to see if they had learned to connect the functional labels to the correct group of toys before playing with more novel toys in the two distinct categories. However, this time, their owners didn’t use the “pull” and “fetch” labels for the dogs.

The team found that the dogs were able to extend the functional labels they’d learned previously to the new toys based on their experience playing with them. In the final test, the dogs showed that they could successfully apply the verbal labels to the toys by either pulling or fetching accordingly, even when their owners hadn’t named them.

“For these new toys, they’ve never heard the name, but they have played either pull or fetch, and so the dog has to choose which toy was used to play which game,” Fugazza says. “This was done in a natural setup, with no extensive training. It’s just owners playing for a week with the toys. So, it’s a natural type of interaction.”

The authors note that the dogs’ ability to connect verbal labels to objects based on their functional classifications and apart from the toys’ physical attributes suggests that they form a mental representation of the objects based on their experience with their functions, which they can later recall. These findings provide insight into the evolution of basic skills related to language and their relationship to other cognitive abilities, including memory, the researchers say.

More research is needed to understand the scope and flexibility of dogs’ language categorization abilities. The researchers suggest future studies to explore whether dogs that don’t learn object labels may nevertheless have an ability to classify objects based on their functions.

“We have shown that dogs learn object labels really fast, and they remember them for a long period, even without rehearsing,” Fugazza says. “And I think the way they extend labels also beyond perceptual similarities gives an idea of the breadth of what these labels could be for dogs.”

This work was supported by National Brain Research Program NAP 3.0 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, and TRIXIE.