Act like Men, Britons! 
Tom Shippey
- The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, edited by Michael Reeve, translated by Neil Wright Buy this book
- The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth Buy this book
The legend of King Arthur must be the most enduring legacy of the Middle Ages. Everyone knows it: children, scholars, readers of comic books, movie-makers. The scenes and motifs associated with it – Excalibur, the Round Table, the adultery of Guinevere, the return to Avalon – are more familiar than anything linked to real medieval kings. Many people, furthermore, believe in King Arthur in a way that admits no argument. Not long ago I met a lady in Peoria, Illinois, who contributed annually to a fund for the upkeep of Guinevere’s grave in the churchyard at Longtown, on the Anglo-Scottish border north of Carlisle. She took very ill the least suggestion that there might be some doubt about its authenticity.
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Tom Shippey’s most recent book is a collection of his papers on Tolkien, Roots and Branches; an anthology, The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, has just won the Mythopoeic Society’s Scholarship Award for 2008.
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