Product Description

Attempts to find the person (if any) behind the legend of King Arthur have been going on for a long time. By the 1980s, the search was more or less abandoned, having reached a dead-end. This work presents an investigation that broke the deadlock. Arthur emerged from it with a firmer status in history. He was also more interesting more like his legend than once appeared likely. It became possible to see better why he became the kind of figure he did. The delay in running him to earth was due to the nature of the problem he posed. Medieval authors who gave him his literary grandeur fitted him into what they claimed was Britain's history several centuries later. Not much of that history can stand up in the light of present day knowledge it is mostly legend. So historians who looked for Arthur swept the medieval matter aside and searched for him in the scanty older records. But the search was inconclusive. A convincing answer called for a different approach. This books shows that the Arthurian legend itself needs to be taken seriously and sifted for clues. If we line up the legend side by side with the facts as we know them today, the problem of Arthur's identity can be solved.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118441 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

About the Author
Geoffrey Ashe is widely regarded as one of the leading Arthurian specialists, and is author of A Guide to Arthurian Britain, Avalonian Quest, The Quest for Arthur's Britain and Camelot and the Vision of Albion. In 2000, Sutton republished his 'The Hell Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality. A former secretary of the Camelot Research Committee, he now lives in Glastonbury.

Customer Reviews

The most brilliant and important thesis on this subject.
I've read this book 5 times now, and it still impresses and amazes me. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize its brilliance and importance until the second time I read it. When this book was first published in the mid 80s, I was already a fan of Ashe, having read other books by him about reconstructing a historical Arthur figure and culture. The first time I read it, I thought that it was weak and conflicted with theories put forth by him in his previous books -- theories which I felt were fine and did not need to be improved on. A couple of years ago, someone convinced me to read it a second time, and it absolutely blew my mind! So I recomend that anyone who is not impressed with it give it another chance. Yes, it shifts Arthur chronologically back a generation or so, but many Arthurian events are being shifted back several years in light of the most up-to-date scholoarship. What Ashe does is he lines up the legend of Arthur, as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, side by side with the history of the fifth century British king, Riothamus, and points out not just a few, but a whole slew of parallels. There are many theories out there trying to reconstruct a historical King Arthur (e.g. see my review of _King Arthur: The True Story_ by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman), many of which try to identify Arthur with someone on record under a different name; most such theories are weak at best and often quite preposterous, being based on the vaguest scraps of evidence and the most tenuous conicidences. Ashe's theory, on the other hand, is a startlingly strong case made up of a preponderance of circumstantial evidence; one may point to any one thing and say that it is only a coincidence, but when you get layer upon layer of these and couple it with archaeological evidence, one can no longer dismiss the similarities between Riothamus and Arthur as mere coincidence. Take it from a guy who has read a lot of books and articles on this subject: this is not just another among the myriad of historical Arthur theories; this deserves to be far and away the preeminent reconstruction of a historical Arthur. Ashe is a genius!

Indispensible Reading for Arthurian Enthusiasts
This book represents the culmination of a lifetime of research by a leading scholar. Geoffrey Ashe should be commended for the great advances he has made in uncovering the history underlying the legend of King Arthur. Even if one finally decides to reject (as I do) the equation of the historical Arthur with Riothamus, one must nonetheless come to share Ashe's appreciation that the history of Britain in this period cannot be properly understood apart from events transpiring elswehere in the Roman Empire, especially Gaul.

A solid foundation of research.
The ideas presented in this classic work, by an author considered by many to be the expert in the field, now form the basis of the widely praised BBC/Learning Channel program "Arthur: King of the Britons." The existence of the 5th-century High King and his documented continental exploits does not diminish in any way the power of the later medieval-to-modern re-tellings that are the stuff of our favourite Hollywood films or absorbing novels. The reality behind the legend is, in fact, as exciting as the more familiar legends. And Ashe tells it very very well.
This book is the starting-point for serious study of the Arthurian legend.