Many people know about Wessex, the -Last Kingdom- of the Anglo-Saxons to fall to the Northmen, but another kingdom, Mercia, once enjoyed supremacy over not only Wessex, but all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. At its zenith Mercia controlled what is now Birmingham and London ? and the political, commercial paramountcy of the two today finds echoes in the past.Those interested in the period will surely have heard of Penda, Offa, and -helfl- Lady of the Mercians ? but remarkably there is no single book that tells their story in its entirety, the story of the great kingdom of the Midlands.Historically, the records are in two halves, pre- and post-Viking, in the way they have been preserved. Pre-Viking, virtually all the source material was written by the victims, or perceived victims, of Mercian aggression and expansion. Post-Viking, the surviving documents tend to hail from places which were not sacked or burned by the Northmen, particularly from Wessex, the traditional enemy of Mercia. The
