Product Description

This volume reveals the truth behind the colourful legends about Arthur and his Round Table, his battles, his court and his death. It aims to prove that Arthur was once a real Dark Age warlord with an extensive family and a band of fearsome warriors at his command.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #169981 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
Eschewing the popular associations that link King Arthur with Lancelot, Merlin, Camelot and Winchester, this labour of love looks elsewhere in its detailed attempt to reveal the truth about the enduring legend. Specifically, the authors look to Wales, where they also believe King Arthur's final resting place to be, thus removing Glastonbury from the equation, too. Their mission within these pages is to dig deep to reveal the real truth about Arthur, to wrest it from the pages of academic journals and make it public knowledge. Adopting a revisionist approach to 'the greatest legendary figure produced by the western world' was never going to be easy, but Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd have impressive credentials. They have spent years researching Arthur and the ancient Britain that was his home, and are founders of the Centre for Arthurian Studies in North-East Wales. Their eagerness is all too apparent as they delve back into the origins of the story as told in ancient Welsh language writings dating back to those dark ages when warriors and tribes roamed the landscape. Some centuries later Geoffrey of Monmouth laid the foundations for our modern take on King Arthur, and through the centuries that followed, little was done to contradict the brave exploits of the son of Utherpendragon. Whether or not the public would actually want the Sword in the Stone-shrouded chivalry of their 'once and future king' to be tampered with after all these centuries is debatable, especially as what is offered as the real Arthur is a much less glamorous - though no less fascinating - Welsh warrior. It's likely that many of the more noble myths will maintain their places in our minds, but that shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying this wonderful analysis of a truly legendary figure from our past. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd have devoted years of research to the subject of Arthur and ancient Britain. They are founders of the Centre for Arthurian Studies at the North Wales Institute, and advise and promote one of the world’s leading collections of Arthurian material, housed in Flintshire Library headquarters. They are currently working with the Welsh Academic Press on a series dedicated to Welsh Arthurian source materials.

Customer Reviews

Meticulous research - flawed theory
Pendragon is an investigation of Arthur based primarily, indeed almost exclusively, on Welsh sources. Unfortunately, Blake and Lloyd suffer from the same problems as almost every other author who has tried to localise Arthur in one part of the country or another.

The authors start from the assumption that Arthur is from Wales - and this means Wales within its modern boundaries - and therefore concentrate on Welsh sources which, not surprisingly, localise Arthur in Wales. Where there are difficulties, these are disregarded, with alternative explanations being dismissed out of hand. For example, Din Eidyn, which is universally recognised as Edinburgh, is for them unidentified because they cannot find it in Wales. This is despite the fact that they themselves quote a source which mentions it with Efrog (York) and Alclut (Dumbarton).

Blake and Lloyd's use of sources is typical for this kind of book. They accept plainly mythological material such as 'Culhwch and Olwen' for historical purposes and include amongst Arthur's cousins Caradoc Freichfras, son of Llyr Marini - apparently an old sea god. They approach Geoffrey of Monmouth with a schizoid attitude, accepting his claims to have an 'ancient book in the British langauage' and, inevitably, claiming it to be Welsh whilst dismissing anything that does not fit a Welsh backgound as Anglo-Norman propaganda. On this basis, they are often happy to reject decades of scholarship with phrases like 'not acceptable', though their case is often tenuous.

And yet there are some very good things about this book. Blake and Lloyd have clearly done painstaking research and have collated information from a great range of sources, picking over the poetry of the medieval bards, saints' lives and triads and presenting collated information on Arthur's relatives and associates. This kind of work is invaluable to an amateur scholar as a reference. They highlight traditions preserved in often very obscure works that have received minimal attention, even from academics, and present some of these in English translation or paraphrase. Even some of their hypotheses are interesting, especially their argument for locating Celliwic in Gwynedd, which is persuasive if not convincing. Had these proposals been presented more cautiously, this would be an excellent book.

Real History v Propaganda
The Normans have a lot to answer for.
Trace the real history of Arthur, the Welsh Princes and Bards, unlike the modern Arthurian romance the original history is not glamourous or sugar sweet. Discover how Dark Age history is mutated into Norman propoganda, trace the original sites and decide for yourself who Arthur was.

If your Welsh you owe it to yourself to read this.

Misleading title.
I was hoping that this would contain 'Truth' about Arthur, but no, all I found were theories. A gross misrepresentation.