PROFESSOR Barbara Yorke will give this year’s King Alfred Lecture tomorrow (friday 21 October) as part of Hyde900’s special King Alfred Weekend celebrations.

The lecture - Was King Alfred always “The Great”? The Fall and Rise of a Reputation - will explore his ever-changing status over the centuries.

Alfred is best-known for burning the cakes but was also the founder of the Royal Navy, a writer and scholar.

Prof Yorke, emeritus professor at Winchester University, said: “Alfred was always a celebrated king because of his defeat of the Vikings and the relatively large number of written sources surviving from his reign.

“But he had some very celebrated successors who actually ruled a large area of England so he did not stand out as much as he might have done. After the Norman Conquest the fictitious Arthur was preferred as a great martial ancestral figure to Alfred.

“One of the interests in studying his reign is to try and uncover the ‘real’ King Alfred. The fact that our knowledge is incomplete and depends upon drawing together a range of archaeological and historical sources to try and understand the nature of the time is one of the things I find particularly intriguing about studying the period,” she added.

The King Alfred Weekend also includes Music for King Alfred’s Day on Saturday. It features choirs from the University of Winchester conducted by the Reverend Professor June Boyce-Tillman. A candle-lit procession to the site of Hyde Abbey concludes the performance.

The lecture takes place on Friday at 7.30pm in St Bartholomew’s Church in Hyde, Winchester. Tickets cost £5 and refreshments are served from 6.45pm.

Music for King Alfred’s Day is held in St Bartholomew’s the next day from 7.30pm-9.30pm. Tickets cost £6 and attendance for under-12s is free. To book tickets or for further information on the King Alfred Weekend please visit www.Hyde900.org.uk