King Arthur: Surviving into Modern Times?

By Richard Denham

Who was King Arthur? What stories and legends about him have survived into the modern day and where, in fact, did these stories come from?

Treatment of the king and his story has become a cottage industry in the twenty-first century, with serious historical research, novels, art, music, film and television, all vying to hijack the king who still sleeps, unperturbed by it all, under his hill.

A number of works with supposed Arthurian connections are spurious, however, particularly in the realms of science fiction. There are those who see the original Star Trek series (1966-69) as an Arthurian adventure. For Arthur, see Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner; for Merlin, the ‘sage’ Spock (Leonard Nimoy); for Camelot, the Starship Enterprise. Its mission, a la the Grail, is to seek out new worlds in space – ‘the final frontier’. The point about Star Trek – and the various much older Arthurian stories – is that it represents action, adventure, excitement. The poets who wrote The Mabinogion; Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth, not to mention Thomas Malory, knew the elements that made up a good story; so did Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek. These elements are universal – the Bible has them too.

Theatre
For whatever reason, relatively few dramatists found inspiration in the legends for their plays. One who did was J.C. Carr, who wrote King Arthur for the stage in 1895. The heart-throb of the day was Johnston Forbes Robertson, who played Lancelot. In publicity photographs, he looks every inch the worthy knight, even if his mail does leave rather a lot to be desired. The costumes and sets, working from his own earlier paintings and sketches, were designed by Edward Burne-Jones of the pre-Raphaelites. Fast forward to 1923 and we find the ex-war poet Laurence Binyon writing King Arthur. In true heroic mould, a musical score for the play was written by Edward Elgar, the musician’s answer to the flag-waving Rudyard Kipling.

Perhaps because dramatists could not take the Arthurian legends seriously (and, practically, because both shape-shifting magic and pitched battles are difficult to pull off on stage) the more recent Arthurian treadings of the boards are musicals. Camelot, by Lerner and Loewe, famous for their double-act creations, was based on White’s The Sword in the Stone and was made into a film in 1967. Merlin was the creation of the illusionist (a magus of our time!) Doug Heming, with music by Elmer Bernstein. Spamalot, itself a spin-off from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, starred Tim Curry as Arthur and Hank Azaria as Lancelot (and, as usual with Azaria ‘other characters’).

Opera
In the world of music, the Arthur stories have not found the conventional outlets. There have been a number of Arthurian titles and characters in very recent albums but the latest full-blown opera was Gawain, written by Harrison Birtwhistle in 1991. Before that, the only truly famous composer to tackle the theme was Richard Wagner, drawing on the rich legacy of the German Medieval romances. Forever associated with Bayreuth and tainted by the adulation of his works by Hitler, Wagner wrote Lohengrin in 1848, the year of revolutions throughout Europe. Tristan und Isolde followed in 1865 and the last creation was Parsifal seventeen years later.

Screens Great and Small
At least one movie has survived from the silent era, pre 1927, but there may have been more, cheaply made and quickly told, which ended up corroding in a reel tin somewhere. The first version of A Connecticut Yankee appeared in 1931 at a time when Hollywood was already dominating the world of cinema. As we have seen, Bing Crosby took over the Will Rogers role in 1949 when he and Cedric Hardwicke were ‘busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do’. It was a subconscious throwback to the ‘roi faineant’, the do-nothing king of the French Medieval romances.

What made every little boy’s heart leap for joy in 1953 was Knights of the Round Table, filmed in Technicolor and perpetual Hollywood sunshine. Robert Taylor was stoic as Lancelot; Ava Gardner beguiling as Guinevere; and who could look more noble and put upon, than Mel Ferrer as Arthur? What was particularly pleasing to the little boys who paid their threepence to watch the movie at ‘the pictures’ was the fact that Messrs Brittan, the toy company, produced authentic copies of the mounted knights made of metal. Collect the set!

The next year, Alan Ladd was the black knight in the film of the same name. The story bore little relationship to Arthur, but at least some of it was filmed at Castell Coch, a real-life (if nineteenth century!) castle in South Wales, home of the Silures tribe and a possible haunt of Arthur 1,500 years earlier.

Two years later, television, which had already got America in its thrall, was fast hooking the younger generation in Britain. William Russell, good-looking and clean-cut, with a 1950s ‘short back and sides’ haircut, was the star of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot. It was the first British television production to be filmed in colour, but during its run, British audiences could only watch it in black and white. And because it was shown during Children’s Hour, there was absolutely no hanky-panky between Lancelot and Guinevere.

Animation revolutionised Arthur. Today there are a large number of animé adaptations of the legends, but it was Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone in 1963 that captured everybody’s heart. Merlin’s owl Archimedes was pure Disney and the silly old duffer tripping over his beard was the perfect foil for the cute kid who grabbed said sword, utterly unaware of his future destiny.

Four years later, the Lerner and Lowe musical Camelot hit the big screen, complete with big names. Richard Harris as Arthur had no clue ‘how to handle a woman’ and no clue how to sing either. Franco Nero as Lancelot, all silver armour and piercing blue eyes, had a much better grasp of things female, in this case, a willowy Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere; as so often, life imitated art and they became a couple, marrying many years later and after a long separation, in 2006.

Julie Andrews and Richard Burton in Camelot

Then came the riotous Monty Python vehicle, The Holy Grail, played entirely for laughs. There wasn’t a single horse in the film – all ‘mounted’ characters simply miming a horse and pulling on non-existent reins – but the thirteenth century armour was quite authentic and the various quests into the Otherworld were no sillier than they are in Malory or the Mabinogion.

Two gloomy movies followed, trying to re-establish some sort of gravitas. The first was Excalibur in 1981. Directed by John Boorman, it is regarded as a classic today, but at the time the violence was found excessive. Nigel Terry was an ambivalent Arthur, not the hero we expected, and both Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Helen Mirren as Morgan Le Fay, unleashed their dark sides. The armour had now slid forward to the fifteenth century, the only real nod to Malory.

Battle between Arthur and Mordred by William Hatherall

In 2004, King Arthur, accompanied by a documentary made for television, purported to be historically accurate fifth century stuff. It wasn’t. Clive Owen, never off the big screen in those days, mumbled his incomprehensible way through the role of Arthur, Ioan Gruffudd (a Welshman at last) was the Frenchman Lancelot and newcomer Keira Knightley, who, of course, can handle a bow better than any man, was Guinevere. Everybody was trying just a bit too hard and what most people remember of the film now is that Knightley’s upper half was enhanced somewhat by CGI for the posters!

A similar ‘authentic’ series, this time made for television, was Arthur of the Britons in which a suitably smouldering Oliver Tobias played the Romano-British warlord; no castles, no plate armour, no round table. There were none of these things either in Merlin (2008-12) which told the story of the teenaged Arthur and his equally teenaged sage (!) There wasn’t the remotest attempt to create period through costume or set, the actors often dressed in almost unaltered tees and jeans, but the kids loved it.

Gawaine and the Green Knight, with Murray Head and Nigel Greene respectively, was good back in 1973. First Knight starring Richard Gere as Lancelot and (everybody’s idea of a king) Sean Connery as Arthur, was not. And don’t get me – or anyone else interested in finding Arthur – started on the Last Knight in 2017 – that was part of the Transformers cycle!

Warhammer board games, role-playing games, video games (Wikipedia lists 24 which is probably not even close to a definitive number) – it goes on and on because Arthur goes on. His character, his stories, are timeless and capable of endless adaptability. In 2018, the name Arthur was the twenty-third most popular boys’ name, up eight from the previous year.

Yet somehow, in all the magnificent creations barely touched upon in this chapter, we have lost sight of him. But even so, I believe we will never really believe the words we sometimes hear in darkness; Arthur is gone …

[all above images are in the Public Domain]

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Richard Denham is the co-author of the best-selling 'Britannia' series. These books follow a group of soldiers and their descendants through a chain of events which will eventually lead to the fall of Roman Britain and the descent into the Dark Ages. His other titles include 'Weird War Two', a collection of strange facts and unsolved mysteries from the Second World War. When not working, reading or writing, Richard enjoys dogs, real ale, music and is, unsuccessfully, trying to make pipe smoking cool again. In a previous role, Richard worked in local government where he helped expose deep-rooted corruption and sexual misconduct within Hampshire Constabulary. He's done with that now, preferring to spend his evenings watching Netflix and drinking tea with his loved ones.

Buy Richard's latest release, Arthur: Shadow of a God, HERE

In Search of the Real Arthur

by Tim Walker

Many readers will be familiar with the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the round table, his court at Camelot, the ill-fated love affair between his queen, Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot, and the search for the Holy Grail. These romantic and chivalric embellishments were added by various writers in the Middle Ages to a less glamorous King Arthur in a story first told by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain in 1136 AD. The effects of these additions to an already fantastical tale is to leave the impression that King Arthur is a made-up character, invented to fill the black hole in British history known as the Dark Ages (specifically, the late fifth and sixth centuries).

However, Geoffrey did not invent Arthur. There are earlier sources, mainly from Welsh literature, who mention a valiant military leader named Artur, Arthur (or Artorius in Latin) who may or may not have been a king. Undoubtedly, one of Geoffrey’s main sources would have been Nennius, the first compiler of early British history, in his work, Historia Brittonum (The History of the Britons c. 820 AD).

Historian Miles Russell in Arthur and the Kings of Britain (2018), describes this work as “a structurally irregular mix of chronicle, genealogical table, legend, biography, bardic praise poems, itinerary and folklore.” It is Nennius who gives us our first tantalising glimpse of a ‘real’ Arthur in the listing of his twelve battles. Nennius tells us, “Arthur fought... together with the kings of the Britons and he was Dux Bellorum.” He describes Arthur as a Dux Bellorum (a leader of battles), who leads the combined armies of the kings of Britain against their enemies, primarily the Angles and Saxons. Some interpret this to mean that Arthur was not a king, just a hired military commander. Others argue that Nennius assumes the reader knows that Arthur is one of the kings of Britain and that as Dux Bellorum, he was first amongst equals.

Miles Russell is of the opinion that Geoffrey originated the legend of King Arthur by taking the name of a real character in Welsh folklore and then deliberately constructing a Dark Ages superhero by piling on his shoulders the deeds of earlier heroic Briton leaders. This was perhaps done to satisfy his sponsors. It was a record of history they would welcome, the story of a Briton hero who fought against the unpopular Saxons whom they had recently defeated. His story of a busy and destructive Arthur fuelled the imaginations of later writers, who further embellished the legend and imbued him with the more romantic and chivalrous qualities of the day.

Whilst researching my new novel, Arthur, Dux Bellorum, I came across an article by historian David Nash Ford (www.britannia.com/history/arthur) who speculates on the locations of the twelve battles of Arthur as outlined by Nennius. Ford suggests that Arthur’s first five battles could have taken place in the modern English county of Lincolnshire. He then places other battles further north in Yorkshire/Northumberland and has a further two, possibly three, battles in Scotland. These locations may or may not be correct, but they suited my storytelling, as I send Arthur and his comrades on a journey north, finally arriving at one of the many Roman forts on Hadrian’s Wall. From his base on the Great Roman Wall, Arthur sallies northwards, fighting northern tribes at three locations in Southern Scotland.

I think it perfectly achievable that he could cover such distance (some historians have suggested the spread of locations is too wide) – travelling by horseback on Roman roads. It is a mere three hundred miles from Winchester, where the story begins, to Newcastle, at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall. He had plenty of time, as my story covers roughly a ten-year period, taking Arthur from late teens to late twenties. There is scope for a second book that takes Arthur southwards to the English Midlands and Wales for more adventures and to complete Nennius’s battle list.

There are other problems with Nennius’s list. For one, he mentions Badon Hill, most likely a battle associated with an earlier king such as Aurelius Ambrosius (or, as in my previous book, Uther Pendragon). Also, he doesn’t mention Arthur’s final battle, Camlann, mentioned by earlier Welsh sources and included in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story.

My description of Arthur is partly based on the picture I chose for the book cover (Arthur Dux Bellorum by Gordon Napier). I was instantly drawn to this superb work of art when I recognised one element of Nennius’s scant description of Arthur: “The eighth battle was in Guinnion fort, and in it Arthur carried the image of the holy Mary, the everlasting Virgin, on his shield and the heathen were put to flight on that day, and there was a great slaughter upon them, through the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the holy Virgin Mary, his mother.” The artist had clearly been inspired by this description in his portrayal of the young leader. Yes, Nennius was a Christian monk who was clearly keen to portray Arthur as a Christian leader fighting the pagan Saxons and Picts – a theme reflected in my storytelling.

What really happened in the late fifth and early sixth centuries? Perhaps one day a lost manuscript will be found, or archaeologists will uncover a definitive battle site or evidence of Arthur’s fortress (almost certainly not called Camelot) or his burial site (almost certainly not Glastonbury Abbey). A recent theory by historian Graham Phillips in his book, The Lost Tomb of King Arthur, makes the intriguing case for the location of Arthur’s kingdom, his final battle and burial place, to be in Powys, central Wales.

His entertaining, if tenuous, case hangs on the possibility that ‘The Bear’ or ‘ur Arth’ was a title given to the kings of Powys, and one particular king was the Arthur of legend. There are still plenty of ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’ in his extensively researched and passionately-argued case, but perhaps the most lasting impression is his enthusiasm for the search and deep commitment to the task of uncovering the definitive lost history of Arthur.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tim Walker published his latest book, Arthur Dux Bellorum, on 1st March and it is available in e-book and paperback from Amazon and other online book stores. Although in a series, it can be read as a standalone novel.

Book Link: http://mybook.to/Arthur

Author Links:
Author website: http://timwalkerwrites.co.uk
Amazon author link: http://author.to/TimWalkerWrites
Goodreads author link: https://www.goodreads.com/timwalker1666
Twitter: https://twitter.com/timwalker1666
Facebook: https://facebook.com/TimWalkerWrites
Instagram: https://instagram.com/timwalker1666

That Little Matter of King Arthur and Camelot

by Helen Hollick

sings: 

“There’s no congenial spot, for happy-ever-aftering…. than here, in, Cam...e...lot!”

DVD Cover 

Camelot: turrets and towers, ladies in flimsy wimples and multi-coloured gowns. Chivalric knights in gleaming armour. Camelot, where the wind whisks the leaves into neat little piles, it never rains until after sundown and the snow must melt at a designated time.

Except, if Arthur had existed, and if he'd had a headquarters it would not have been a castle with flags fluttering from the turrets, a drawbridge and portcullis, a bailey – stone walls, and dungeons (and no dragons). The romantic view of King Arthur’s Camelot is a fairy-tale type Disney castle, with jousting, courtly behaviour and a round table in the magnificent tapestry-adorned Great Hall. The movie starring Richard Harris was fun. But history it wasn't.

Unfortunately, no one is certain whether Arthur existed or not; if he had been a genuine historic character he would have lived in Britain in the mid-to-late 400s or early 500s, between the going of the Romans and the coming of the Anglo-Saxon English. His realm would have been Britain, not England – Arthur's Britain is what we today call England and Wales combined, perhaps with the lowlands of Scotland included as well. In Arthur’s time, the Welsh were Britons, the Scots were Irish, the English were Germanic and the Romans were… well, in general, were from anywhere except Rome!

And Arthur’s Castle? We don’t know about that either, although there is a mass of speculation. Probably such a headquarters would have been a semi-derelict Roman Fort, or a re-vamped iron-age hillfort. Caer Leon in South Wales has been suggested. Chester on the border of North Wales and England – Arthur’s Seat in Scotland, Tintagel in Cornwall; Winchester, even London….  there are dozens of possibilities. It is almost a case of 'pick your own favourite.'

Tintagel, Cornwall
(photo Kathy Hollick-Blee)

Cadbury Castle near Yeovil in Somerset is one of the main contenders, and the one I used for Arthur’s main fortress in my Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy. Excavations discovered that the place - once an Iron-Age fortress - was indeed occupied in Arthur’s period (again assuming he did exist!) of mid-fifth to mid-sixth century, the period popularly known as the Dark Ages (and rightly so, as we are still very much in the dark about this era of immense upheaval.)

Anything connected with King Arthur is conjecture; there is no factual proof of evidence for his existence, which is why so many historians / authors / enthusiasts argue like mad about the various theories, everyone insisting their idea is the truth. The only fact in all of it being that we all disagree with each other.

If Arthur had existed, was he pre-Roman, Romano-British, post Roman or early British-Saxon? The only certainty (probably!) is that he was not a king nor a knight in armour belonging to the 12^th or 13^th centuries. If he had been of this later period we would have had at least some historical, factual, reference to him, not just the Medieval tales - the early equivalent of historical fiction.

'Camelot'? er no...
more like 'Certainlynot'!
(image: Pixabay)

The scanty - somewhat dubious - 'historical' references we do have (Gildas, Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth in particular,) are, at base level, fairly accurate records of the fifth/sixth century, but like the exaggerated stories of Robin Hood, they have become embellished during later years from Medieval monks to the Victorians and the New-Age hippies of the 1960s, with so many facts altered that the truth has now become vastly distorted. Alas. (Glastonbury in particular was affected by an upsurge of myth and magic in the 60s: nearly every shop in the High Street sold crystals and embraced 'Flower Power'. I'm not entirely certain what it all had to do with King Arthur though...)

Arthur’s Camelot (assuming he had one!) would have been a fortified hill-fort built primarily of timber, with a wattle-and-daub long house. But whether it was fortified to keep out the Saxons, the Scotti or an almost infinite variety of different foreign invaders is speculation. My money is on a warlord attempting to preserve what little was left of the crumbling Roman existence in Britain against the encroachment of settling Anglo-Saxons. Maybe the West Country or what is now Essex, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Sussex. There again, I might be wrong.

For my Arthurian trilogy I stripped away the Medieval myth and looked closer at the early Welsh legends. My Arthur is a warlord, a no-nonsense man who had to fight hard to gain his kingdom - and even harder to keep it.  I have deliberately made him a pagan, a non-Christian, because I wanted to get away from the Christian-based 'Holy Grail' tales. My Arthur puts his faith in his sword not a god. I do use the term 'king' for him because I felt readers would be more comfortable with a more familiar term of leadership (as opposed to something like Dux Bellorum).

The Boy:

Who became a Man:

Who became a King:

Who became a Legend.

Whatever the truth, the good thing about Arthur is that he is an absolute delight for fiction authors. We do not know the facts so we can make it up - and no one can prove us wrong. So huzzah for imagination, a good storyteller and long may Arthur  of Camelot (wherever it might be) reign as the King of Fiction!

For a full bibliography of books used while researching the Pendragon's BannerTrilogy:
 http://www.helenhollick.net/bibliography.html

What are your views on King Arthur? You are welcome to leave a comment below.

~~~~~~~~~~

Helen Hollick lives on a thirteen-acre farm in Devon, England. Born in London, she wrote pony stories as a teenager, moved to science-fiction and fantasy, and then discovered historical fiction. Published for over twenty years with her Arthurian Trilogy, and the 1066 era she became a USA Today bestseller with her novel about Queen Emma The Forever Queen (UK title A Hollow Crown.) She also writes the Sea Witch Voyages, pirate-based nautical adventures with a touch of fantasy. She has written a non-fiction about pirates and one about smugglers in fact and fiction which is due to be published in 2018. 

Helen is also the founder of Discovering Diamonds, a review blog for historical fiction, submissions welcome.

Website: www.helenhollick.net
Newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/HelenHollick
Main Blog: www.ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com
Twitter: @HelenHollick
Amazon: viewAuthor.at/HelenHollick (universal link)