(1) Thornycroft was thus largely given free rein to devise an idealized image of Anglo-Saxon Englishness in his statue for the millenary commemoration.(2) The Alfred the Great millenary in 1901 makes this problem apparent.(3) Clearly, much of what was propagated about Alfred at the time of the millenary was based on the accretion of centuries of tradition and myth.(4) For them, the millenary celebrations proffered an avenue to the rebuilding of the cultural self-confidence needed to continue ruling the empire.
