THERE ARE several Anglo-Saxon kings who warrant and could sustain the full-scale biographical treatment: Alfred, of course; Æthelstan and Edgar, if one were not to be pressed too hard for the personal dimension; and Æthelred, Cnut, and Edward the Confessor, all allowing plenty of scope for the exercise of a fecund historical imagination. It would be only fair to add Queen Emma, as another figure of exceptional interest and importance. In most of these cases, there is just about enough material to draw together, and then to play with, and even a hint of the subject's personality. Of course we have to accept the limitations of the exer- cise, imposed upon us by the lack of adequate source material, and we must heed the words of one of the most renowned practitioners of the genre of medieval biography. As Professor Barlow said in connection with King Edward the Confessor, ‘we have to scrape the barrel with care: every scrap of information is precious’; and, as he went on to say, the historian ‘has to steer between bland assurance, for which he has no warrant, and complete scepticism, which denies his craft’. I marked that passage as an undergraduate; and it remains the craft in which I am most interested.

I shall speak mainly from the recent experience of having written an account of Edward's father, King Æthelred the Unready, for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.