Hero queen had Saxon appeal
QUESTION Was there a great Saxon Queen of England who has been forgotten by history?
AETHELFLAED, Lady of the Mercians, lived during the 9th and 10th centuries in Anglo-Saxon England. She was the eldest daughter of King Alfred the Great. Her crucial role in the defence and expansion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia has been overlooked. She deserves the recognition of such warrior maidens as Boudicca and Joan Of Arc.
Aethelflaed was born around AD 870, during a tumultuous period marked by conflicts between Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Viking invaders. In AD878, King Alfred achieved a significant victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Edington, which resulted in the establishment of the Danelaw – a region in the East of England under Viking control.
After Alfred’s death in 899, Aethelflaed’s brother, Edward the Elder, became the king of Wessex. Aethelflaed married the much older Aethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia, and together they played a key role in defending their territories against Viking attacks.
Aethelred, who had served Alfred as a loyal lieutenant, bound together the English-speaking kingdoms of Wessex and the newly reclaimed Mercia. Aethelred died in 911 and Aethelflaed became the ruler of Mercia. This is significant, as she can be considered the only woman to become an AngloSaxon Queen in her own right.
Aethelflaed proved a skilled military leader and diplomat. She continued the efforts to push back the Vikings and reclaim territories in the Danelaw. She fortified strategic locations, such as Chester, and built a network of defensive burghs (fortified towns) to secure the borders of Mercia.
Her crowning achievement was the routing of Danish forces at The Battle of Tettenhall in 910, outside Wolverhampton. This marked the last Danish incursion into western England.
In 918, Aethelflaed died in Tamworth. Her efforts were instrumental in laying the foundation for the unification of England under her nephew, King Athelstan, who achieved this in AD 927. Margaret Forster, Gloucester.
QUESTION Who has played the most characters in one film?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, British stage and screen actor Peter Wyngarde memorably played 12 different characters in ‘Epic’, an episode of The Avengers that was originally broadcast in the UK on April 1, 1967.
The story concerned crazed movie director ZZ Von Schnerk (Kenneth J. Warren), who arranged for Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) to be kidnapped and brought to his studios on the outskirts of London, where he planned to shoot a movie about her life... and death. Von Schnerk cast has-been screen goddess Damita Syn (Isa Miranda) and faded matinee idol Stewart Kirby (Peter Wyngarde) as Mrs Peel’s adversaries, tasked with bringing about her demise.
In addition to Stewart Kirby,
Wyngarde played 11 other characters – a cab driver, vicar, undertaker, priest, Roman centurion, Confederate soldier, cowboy, Native American, Chicago gangster, World War I German general and Count Dracula.
The make-up and disguises worn by Wyngarde were the creations of Basil Newall (1924-1991).
QUESTION Where are Euro banknotes made? Is it possible to tell which country they were issued in?
THE production of Euro banknotes is a combined effort between the European Central Bank and the National Central Banks of (currently) 11 of the EU member nations.
Each EU member nation makes an annual estimate of the quantity of Euro banknotes it needs in different denominations, then the ECB allocates production quotas to the 11 NCBs that will print the notes. The production is carried out in high-security printing works in the 11 nations.
The design of the Euro banknotes is identical, regardless of where they are printed, so it isn’t possible to identify their origins from the design.
In the first series of Euro notes, it was possible to identify the country of issue from the initial letter of the note’s serial number. A separate code was used to identify the country where it was printed. But since the introduction of the second series of notes, this is no longer possible.
Instead, the initial letter of the note’s serial number identifies the print works where the note was produced and, by inference, the country in which it was produced, but not the country of issue. If there is a second or subsequent letter in the serial number, it has no meaning in terms of origin.
The country codes are: D – Poland, E and U – France, F – Bulgaria, H and J – UK (yes, we still print Euro notes), M – Portugal, N – Austria, P – Netherlands, R, W and X – Germany, S – Italy, T – Ireland, V – Spain, Y– Greece, and Z – Belgium. Each NCB carries the cost of printing the batches it is allocated, then distributes them in accordance with a plan devised by the ECB.
Euro notes are printed on a cotton-fibre paper. Several printing processes are used to create the design elements and anti-forgery devices of the notes, including offset and intaglio printing, hot-stamping for the hologram and silk screen printing for the numbers that change colours.
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