Act like Men, Britons!

Tom Shippey

  • BuyThe History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, edited by Michael Reeve, translated by Neil Wright
    Boydell, 307 pp, £50.00, November 2007, ISBN 978 1 84383 206 5
  • BuyThe History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
    Broadview, 383 pp, £8.99, January 2008, ISBN 978 1 55111 639 6

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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