The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom is a historical novel by Bernard Cornwell, published in 2004, and the first book of his Saxon Stories. It opens in 866 with the Danish attack on Bebbanburg in Northumbria and introduces Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon noble boy taken by Vikings and brought up inside their household, religion and language.

Uhtred is the second son of the ealdorman, and the story begins by naming the boy Osbert, which is the name he will later leave behind. His father and elder brother are killed, the estate passes to a kinsman, and the earl who captures him gives him a life worth living next to the family that lost him, so the book's central difficulty is established before its main campaign begins.

Cornwell built the series around the figure of King Alfred of Wessex, and this first volume ends with Uhtred fighting in the West Saxon army at Cynwit. The books are written in Uhtred's voice as an old man looking back, which lets the novel move between hindsight and the confusion of the moment while keeping a large cast and a long war in view.