KING CNUT AND THE VIKING CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 1016 (PB)

The Viking Conquest of England in 1016 – a far tougher and more brutal campaign than the Norman Conquest exactly half a century later – saw two great warriors, the Danish prince Cnut and his equally ruthless English opponent King Edmund Ironside, fight an epic campaign. Cnut sailed in two hundred longboats, landing first in September 1015 on the Wessex coast with 10,000 soldiers. The two forces fought each other to the point of exhaustion for the next fourteen months. It was a war of terrifying violence that scarred much of England, from the Humber to Cornwall.