Oswald Whiteblade lived one of the most influential and colorful lives in early English history. Before his death in battle against the pagans of Mercia cut short his reign as king of Northumbria (634-42), he remodeled his northeastern English homeland as a Christian kingdom, founded the monastery of Lindisfarne, introduced a culture of learning which influenced all Europe, and became the most powerful ruler in Britain. Max Adams's thrilling account rescues Oswald from Dark Age obscurity to reveal an unjustly forgotten English hero—a king whose return from exile to reclaim his birthright was the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien's Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. But this is more than just a biography of the first great English monarch; it is a stunningly researched, wide-ranging, beautifully written, and revelatory portrait of early medieval England in all its aspects.