Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alfred the Great was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886 and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was given the epithet the Great from as early as the 13th century, popularised from the 16th century, and is the only native-born English monarch labelled as such.
Alfred the Great was born around 849 at the royal estate of Wantage in the district of Berkshire. He was the youngest of six children of King Æthelwulf of Wessex and his wife Osburh.
Alfred won a decisive victory over the Danes at the Battle of Edington in 878, possibly fought near Westbury, Wiltshire. He then pursued the Danes to Chippenham and starved them into submission, after which the Viking leader Guthrum and 29 of his chief men were baptised at Aller.
Alfred the Great's burh system was a network of thirty-three fortified strongholds set about 30 kilometres apart, allowing the military to confront an attack anywhere in the kingdom within a day. According to the Burghal Hidage, the system required 27,071 soldiers, roughly one in four free men in Wessex, and 22 of the burhs later developed into boroughs.
Alfred the Great issued a law code called the domboc, combining his own laws with those of King Ine across 120 chapters. He founded a court school, recruited scholars such as Grimbald, John the Saxon, Plegmund and Asser, and personally translated four works including Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy.
Alfred the Great died on the 26th of October 899, aged 50 or 51. His body was moved from the Old Minster to the New Minster, then in 1110 to Hyde Abbey, and after the abbey was dissolved in 1538 his coffin was struck by convicts digging foundations for a town jail in 1788.