i thought if he's both a monster and a saint at the same time, then i've got another genghis khan, if is too strong. but i liked genghis because he was hated by his enemies and loved by his own family. and i look for that sort of humanising quality. i want them to be rich and varied and interesting, as he is. and, of course, it's a very interesting period in english history. it is, is fascinating, because its book ended by athelstan, the first king of england, who also was king of scotland. yes. yes, constantine came down. he had coins made with "rex totius britanniae", and a fair claim to being an actual king of britain. but, of course, that only lasted as long as his short reign, which is 1a years. it's 910—988, something like that. 400 years after the romans had been there for half a millennium. and, of course, you've written about caesar and augustus and the rest of them, and this is the beginning, really, after a gap, of what happened after the romans had gone. yes, to some extent this is the run—up, of course, to 1066. these are the kings that people probably don't know, but the