Three men have been credited with being the first king of England - Alfred the Great, his son Edward the Elder and Edward's son and Alfred's grandson, Athelstan. It is an undoubted fact that, were it not for the work of Alfred, there might never have been the possibility of an English kingdom in the sense that we now understand it. It is also true that Athelstan was the first explicitly to rule over an English kingdom in roughly its present shape...