The Rest Is History - 19. King Arthur

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

It remains the most romantic historical story of all time, but is the legend of King Arthur a myth? Was he even English? And will he rise again when the country needs him most? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook take their places at the round table. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. It's all true, or it ought to be. So said Winston Churchill of the legend of King Arthur. Romantic historical story or just an invented myth? Well, welcome to The Rest Is History with me, Dominic Samaruk, and my very own Mordred, Tom Holland. Tom.

I should tell you that in the script, Dominic, it says my very own Galordred, Tom Holland. Tom. I should say that in the script, in the script, Dominic, it says my very own Galahad. I know, but I was never going to read that out. I was never going to read that out. Very subtly done. Yeah. I was hoping you wouldn't notice. So let's kick off. This is a great subject. King Arthur was my very first historical enthusiasm. So I read the Lady Bird King Arthur books. I read Antonia Fraser's book about the Knights of the historical enthusiasm. So I read the Lady Bird King Arthur books. I read Antonia Fraser's book about the Knights of the Round Table. And I think I read those before I read anything about real kings. That was probably true of lots of people who get into history, isn't it?

You start with King Arthur and Robin Hood, and then you get into the, you know, enclosures and dissolution of the monasteries and all the really exciting, glamorous subjects. Yes. There's always the vague feeling, attaching to reading about the enclosures that nights nights with penance are just a lot more fun um and i suppose hanging over this entire theme is the obvious one uh which summed up very effectively by Tom McTague, the UK correspondent for The Atlantic, who asks, Arthur, who, what, why, how?

I guess you could express that as basically, did he exist? Yeah. So Dominic, are you a sceptic or a believer? Well, that's it. To my mind, I guess if I like to believe that arthur existed of course because i'm a romantic but ultimately i suppose my my instinct is that there were multiple arthur's right that probably there were multiple warlords and generals some of them roman leftovers some of them celtic some of them maybe even germanic um who sort of fed into the Arthur legend at the end of Roman Britain

in that sort of period that we think of as the Dark Ages. And that, you know, it wasn't completely invented that there must have been grains of truth, as there always are in historical myths. But anyway, Tom, this is your field, you're on home turf. You should be answering this question. I don't think he existed. You know, this word, euorrhagism um the idea that yes that um in the distant past you have mortals kings powerful figures who go on over the course of time become elevated and end up as gods yeah but i think that arthur is a kind of interesting example

of uh something going the opposite way that i think he's essentially a kind of mythical figure, a figure of folklore, who gets attached to a specific historical narrative. And the reason that that can work is that, as you said, the setting for Arthur are the century, maybe two centuries after the collapse of Roman Britain, which is the two century period, that really we struggle to fit a narrative onto it. We have so few written sources and the evidence from archaeology, from genetics, everything is so contradictory and so complex that in a sense, if you wanted to slot a mythical figure and pretend, imagine, cast him, construct him as someone who had actually existed, that's the period that you would do it but i think that um i guess there are two problems really one is that the the sources that mention

arthur are incredibly late right so they're well after the event yes almost so there's there's um there's a description of um a raid that was launched by um some welsh-speaking britons from the region of edinburgh against what's thought to be the roman fort of cataric and this is set about well about 600 and the guy who is describing it claims at the beginning of the poem a guy called anerian, I am narrating it. And he's supposed to have lived around 600. And in that poem, there is a phrase that this warlord pulls off great feats, but he was not Arthur, is the phrase. So if we can identify that at 600, then that is evidence for it being very early.

And Arthur being somebody that people will know and that people will say, is he an Arthur, isn't he? So that's pretty big, isn't it? I mean, doesn't that suggest... Except that. Except that. This is a poem that was first written down in the 9th century and the earliest manuscript we have of it is the 13th century. So there's a lot of potential for Chinese whispers there.

And even if it was written in 600, he was no Arthur. I mean, Arthur could still be a mythical figure. Yes, like you'd say he was no Heracles or, yeah. Yes, exactly, exactly. And then what about these people like Gildas? So Gildas is somebody who writes about Arthur, isn't he? Tell me about Gildas. Right, so Gildas is, again, difficult to pin him down exactly, but he's Tell me about Gildas. Right, so Gildas is probably, again, difficult to pin it down

exactly, but he's probably writing about 500. And he does give a kind of garbled narrative of what's going on, even though it's completely shot through with all kinds of Old Testament imagery. So he's not writing a kind of straight history. And he does give us, he gives us a portrait of a haughty tyrant who subsequently gets identified with a guy called Vortigern, inviting Saxon mercenaries in. Then you have Britain imploding. You have a state of warfare. And this conventionally is the period that you associate with Arthur. But it's not Arthur who is mentioned.

It's a guy called Ambrosius Aurelianus, who is described as the last of the Romans. And Arthur isn't there. It's a yawning gap. So why does Gildas not mention Arthur? I guess there are various... But hold on, don't people think that Ambrosius Aurelianus is Arthur? That's a lot of the stuff that I've read. People say, well, this is obviously Arthur. That was his real name. Is that just balderdash? It's kind of quite desperate because he's not called Arthur.

I mean, he's called Drogosius Aurelianus. So why is Gildas not mentioning Arthur? It could be because he hasn't heard of him. So Arthur is operating in some other area of the country that the Gildas hasn't heard. Or it could be that Gildas has a problem with Arthur. So in a lot of the early saints' lives that you get in Wales and other Celtic areas, Arthur is often cast as a kind of problematic figure who preys on the church.

So perhaps that's the reason. So he's been cancelled. Gildas has cancelled him. Yeah, or perhaps he just doesn't exist. You know, he's an imaginary figure. And I think that that's the likeliest explanation. Where Arthur does appear in what seems to be a historical record is in a Welsh series of texts, of chronicles and so on that is attached to the name of um a welsh writer called nennius but again it's all very confusing and this is the one that gives the

famous list of 12 battles that arthur is supposed to have won culminating in the battle of baden which we can be fairly confident is a battle that was fought because gildas mentions it but he he doesn't associate with arthur he doesn't even specifically say that it's ambrosius aurelianus who won the battle of baden he doesn't say who the battle of baden was against um he doesn't really provide a solid date for it so the whole thing is a kind of it's it's a mess and i think that that being so you've got to ask well why and how would the legend of Arthur emerge? And I think that it's pretty clear that what's going on is that you have a Welsh speaking tradition that is very hostile to what it sees as a takeover of its lands by Saxons. And likewise, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, you have a very similar account of Saxons and Angles sweeping westwards, conquering the homelands of the Britons, pushing them into

Wales, seen from the other side. And traditionally, this has been understood to be a historical narrative that the Romans withdraw, that the Britons invite in the Saxons, the Saxons then conquer what becomes England. Arthur supposedly wins the Battle of Baden, keeps the Saxons at bay for a few decades, the Saxons then come back in. And that's a kind of narrative that has been repeated and repeated and is still kind of widely held to. But I think it's a fantastical one. That's not what actually the archaeological evidence shows and it's not what the genetic evidence shows let me interrupt you so modern sort of academic historians very recently especially if they're sort of quite sort of um quite woke shall we say they think that this is the wrong narrative because it presents immigration as kind of contested and it's all done with fire and sword and they sort of

argue oh no it was much more gradual and there was an assimilation that the the idea that the Saxons came in and they drove Arthur and the Britons all into Wales is all balderdash and it was this sort of multicultural process and all the rest of it do you buy all that is that your take on it all I don't think it's about um woke anxieties about immigration i think it's about the fact that um all the evidence on the ground the archaeological evidence shows very little sign and the genetic evidence shows very little sign of a kind of mass invasion basically the the angles and the saxons like the welsh are they're all descended from the people who lived in Roman

Britain. What seems to have happened is that, for reasons that we can't be absolutely certain about, that the eastern half of the former province of Britannia starts to identify culturally with the kind of the Germanic reaches of the North Sea. And it's a conscious reaction against Romanitas, against the ideals of Rome. And almost as if in reaction to that, the western half of Britain, which had always been less Romanised, very, very radically starts to identify with Roman history, Roman precedents, and so on. And essentially, by the time you get to the 9th and 10th century what has happened is that um these different stories these different traditions these different back projections have come to be fossilized so that both the welsh and the

anglo-saxons believe that there was a kind of genuine migration but there's that there is you know in terms of of the essentially the kind of the cutting edge of academic research at the moment there's no evidence at all for this migration and so therefore it becomes more difficult to fit arthur into that that narrative well okay let's let's let's get let's let's get back stuck into arthur the idea of there being somebody called Arthur, this incredibly romantic figure, when does that really kick in? At what point are educated people swapping the story of Arthur and embellishing it?

So is this pre-Norman conquest? This becomes widespread? Or is it after that? Well, you're getting it with Nennius, whoever Nennius was, if you know. well you're getting it with nennius whoever nennius was if you know you so you're getting it in um uh as the anglo-saxons are starting to kind of solidify the kingdom of england so you are getting arthur enshrined as a kind of folk hero for the welsh and but not the saxons right they they absolutely not no no no and and so for alfred doesn't i mean

he either doesn't know about arthur or he thinks arthur is a bad guy am i right yeah so arthur is not mentioned by beat who essentially provides the only narrative that we have for what we could call the dark ages uh gets picked up by by alfred who is sponsoring the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle doesn't mention Arthur either. So essentially, Arthur becomes a folk hero for the Welsh, a reminder of victories won over the Saxons, as they're called. And there's a kind of implicit sense of prophecy. So you also get in Nennius, I think, the first mention of Merlin. With Merlin's prophecies, he is saying that the time will come where the Britons will essentially get back the lowlands, Logra. They will get back England. So it's this idea that Arthur will come again, that the Welsh will reverse the humiliation of their defeat.

That's essentially what's powering it. That sort of fantasy because it never happened. Is that what you're saying? That he's basically inventing this humiliation that never actually took place? The Anglo-Saxons, obviously, they identify with the more Germanic traditions to the degree that they end up speaking a Germanic language, that they take on Germanic names, that they take on germanic names that they um trace their origins back to um germanic gods yeah um and so culturally this then becomes dominant over the lowlands and the romanized christian welsh are pushed into as they say into into the mountain fastnesses and that's the great cultural divide um and it's one of obviously

that um survives the norman conquest and that then muddies the waters further because essentially arthur is an inspiration to the welsh and then also he becomes quite a potent figure for the norman conquerors and and their heirs because again it's kind of putting the english down yeah and really the guy who popularizes arthur as a historical figure is writing in the early 12th century and that's jeffrey of monmouth so this is laura lawson's question laura lawson we should get into some questions now i reckon yes um because you and i can talk about King Arthur for, I mean, maybe people were happy to hear it, but we could probably talk a witter on for days between ourselves.

But Laura Lawson says, basically, how is it, how much is it Geoffrey of Monmouth's creation? And you think it is, right? I think it's, Geoffrey of Monmouth is absolutely hugely influential. He is constructing, he's writing a history of the kings of britain and it's jeffrey monmouth who gives the kind of the entire narrative from brutus the trojan escaping the sack of troy coming to britain killing all the drag killing all the giants um establishing his kingdom and that gives you a sense of the kind of the quality of the accuracy um and it has to be and he gives us a lot of the familiar story that we now know so right he is the guy who weaves in the story of arthur with vortigern with the

arrival of hengist and horser with merlin um with the uh this idea of a golden age um where arthur becomes the king of the whole of britain um he invades uh roman gaul he becomes the kind of emperor on the continent as well so he's an all-conquering kind of superhero and then there is the um the war between mordred and arthur that um ends with arthur's uh death perhaps um and uh that then um after arthur's death then uh the britain's everything goes wrong for them but i think that what is interesting why is jeffrey of monmouth what's he doing with this okay so the last sentence of his history he ends it with the reign of athelstan and athelstan is the anglo--Saxon king who joins all the various

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms together to forge the kingdom of England. But he also claims the supremacy over the whole of Britain. He says he's the king of all of Britain, including the Welsh princes, including all the various kings of what will become Scotland. And Athelstan is a king who is appropriating the Roman traditions as well. So he holds kind of great derbars in Roman cities and he summons kings from across Britain. Does he use the word emperor, Tom? Yes, he does. Yes. So he's an imperator, he's a rex, he's all these kind of qualities. And I think it's telling that that jeffrey monmouth finishes

with athelstan because in a sense what he's doing is back projecting athelstan's achievements onto the figure of arthur right so i think that arthur is a kind of a britannized athelstan if you like he's he's an emperor who rules over the whole of britain who is the heir to roman traditions um who achieves great things and defeats his enemies and i think essentially that that's what's going on and i think as well it's telling that there are welsh writers who are aware that this is absolute nonsense there's g's Gerald of Wales, splendidly named Gerald of Wales, who describes a man who's possessed by devils. And he says that when the gospels are placed on the chest of this possessed man, the devils flee away. But if you put a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's history on his chest, all the devils come flocking back. That's historians, that's just historians being bitchy about each other, isn't it?

Yes. So there's a kind of kickback against the fact that Geoffrey is writing history. But obviously, you know, people have a stake. The Welsh have a stake in it. So they're generally quite keen on it. And of course, the kings of England have a stake in it. Because if Arthur was the king of the whole of Britain, then obviously that's quite useful if you're a norman king wanting to conquer the welsh wanting to conquer the scots and because

arthur had invaded um and conquered much of the roman empire according to jeffrey monmouth it's also quite useful if you want to launch a continental invasion so that's the essentially the kind of the context for for arthur that we get by the middle ages um he he's a he's of use to the kings of england and so that's the point at which i guess he gets then he gets picked up by the courtly kind of tradition doesn't he chrétien de toit and then malory and all the rest of it but you did there's one thing we haven't gone into um so this has started to come up a lot in recent years. We have a question from Killing Me Softly.

I know who he is. He's a TV producer called Mick McAvoy. And he says, there's a lot of evidence. He says that King Arthur was from Scotland. We have a Ben Arthur and Arthur's seat. Merlin has been linked to the ancient royal family based at Dumbarton Rock. So was King Arthur Scottish?

How unlike a Scottish listener to write something that's Scottish and that the English have stolen it, or indeed the Welsh have stolen it. So do you think, or is that, well, one answer might be that Scottish and Welsh are kind of the same in this period, that there's no clear distinction between the two would that be completely untoward tom well the the welsh speakers who give us this early romance where you this this epic where you get he was no arthur yeah i mean they're welsh speakers um so those traditions the traditions of arthur the traditions of a great warlord who fought the angles and the saxons that's um as true if you're a welsh speaker, you know, Dumbarton,

the great rock of Dumbarton, as it is if you're in what we'd now call Wales. So in that sense, I think, yes, Arthur is a kind of mythic figure for all those who are speaking kind of variants of Welsh. But what, of course, what becomes the Kingdom of Scotland, you know, it's not, the Scots are not interested in Arthur. So it's complex. So the Cornish obviously claim... I mean, did the Bretons have sometimes made exaggerated claims to Arthur?

But what about the Cornish? So that's... You go to Cornwall on holiday and you sort of... There's always this Arthurian sort of legend hanging over you the whole time, isn't there? It's a place of standing stones and ruins and obviously Tintagel. We had lots of questions about Tintagel. Yes, we got one from Alan Andrew Wild,

who asks how much of Arthur's connection to Tintagel is history versus legend? And I think this is a fascinating question because it goes to the heart of this kind of weird nexus, this web of history and myth and folklore and the the late antique and the medieval and the modern attitudes to arthur um and so having said that let's have a break um delayed gratification we'll come back to it uh after we listen to the adverts i'm marina hyde and i'm richard os Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment it's your weekly fix

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and we are poised for an answer from Tom Holland all about Tintagel. I can't wait. Tom, tell us, is Tintagel real? Yeah, so what's Arthur's connection to Tintagel? According to the legend,'s where arthur is conceived yeah and uther pendragon arthur's father has fallen in love with igraine who is um the the wife of the duke of cornwall and uther being um an impetuous man immediately goes and besieges

tintagel uh merlin comes offers him access to uh igraineraine while the Duke of Cornwall husband is away. He dies, Uther gets to Igraine, and Arthur is conceived. Is he not in disguise? Isn't Uther not disguised? Yes, he's disguised as her husband. Yes, that's right, yeah. So that's the story. Poor behaviour, Tom.

Very poor behaviour, yes, very poor behaviour. And also Tintagel is associated with more poor behavior um the legend of tristan and exalt um yes who goes to get the irish princess brings her back there are women stealing going on in cornwall so so that's the that's the kind of that's the connection um how did it come about it is the case that in the fifth and sixth centuries tintagel seems to have been a major center so there are all kinds of um evidence for trade with the roman world right and that is so maybe there's a kind of a legacy of folk memories of that which explains why arthur is linked to it but really the reason why tintagel is the kind of emblematic image of a kind of romantic medieval castle is because that's what it was in the middle ages because it gets given to a brother of henry iii

richard who becomes richard duke of cornwall and he basically moves in on tintagel and builds the castle that we see there now and even when he building it, it was in a kind of consciously retro style. Right. Yeah. Essentially, Richard Cornwall is building Tintagel to look like he imagines an Arthurian castle should look. And in a sense, that's what you get over and over with the Arthurian myths is people constantly constructing images of what it should look like. And really, it's still going on to this day because recent excavations there, they found a lump of Roman stone and there was an inscription on it that perhaps mentioned someone called Artognu. Oh, Tom, you're still denying Arthur was real? Unbelievable.

Right, so there are all kinds of problems. It's not Arthur. It's, you know, he's called our dog name. But the English Heritage put out a press release saying, Whoa, it is Arthur. And in a sense, what they're doing there is exactly what people were doing in the Middle Ages, not just at Tintagel, but particularly Glastonbury, where the monks at Glastonbury, you know,

they're manufacturing the links with Arthur because it will bring in tourists. And essentially English heritage, when they're saying, yes, this shows that Arthur existed here, basically they're doing the same. Because of course, that's, you know, the truth is that Arthur sells. I mean... Yeah, of course. Of course. Well, let's talk about Arthur specifically, because we had tons of questions about Arthur as a sort of mythic figure. So let's kick off. Colonel Neil, he says, I think rightly, isn't King Arthur similar to a lot of other nations' mythical figures who lay waiting to arise and defend the land when it's in peril? So Finn McCool in Ireland or Siegfried in Germany, love the podcast, he says

quite rightly. Thank you. But that's true, isn't it, Tom? Arthur is an archetype, really, rather than an individual. Yes, well, becomes the emblem of um someone who will come again and and save us and yeah obviously over the past few years quite a lot of people wondering when he's going to turn up yeah um but i mean even in even in uh in england we've got drake as well haven't we got drake's drum well nemo has a question that is which is just a gift to you tom so nemo says what are the parallels between the legend of King Arthur and another resurrected hero, Jesus Christ? And do you think these similarities are deliberate? So do you think the Arthurian story was kind of modelled on the story of Christ?

Is there some truth in that? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think, well, no, I think it's about, well, in a way, the story about Arthur coming again is tied up with the snarl of Anglo-Welsh politics in the Middle Ages. Because it's the Welsh who talk about how Arthur will come again, perhaps, and give them back what's now England, but was Britain.

And so the kings of England, you know, they don't want that. And Edward I, in particular, who will end up conquering Wales, is massively not interested in the idea of Arthur coming back again. But equally, Edward is very interested in the model of Arthur as someone who rules the whole of Britain. So it's in Edward's reign that you get the focus at Glastonbury on the discovery of Arthur's tomb. The monks kind of miraculously discover it and the grave of Guinevere, his queen. And there's great kind of pomp and celebration and and arthur's grave gets moved and enshrined but it's also very it's convenient right that it's in england that they found it in

england and not in yes wales or cornwall or yeah it it's incredibly convenient because essentially what edward is trying to do is to is to have the the arthur who conquers the whole of britain while getting rid of the arthur who will come again yeah um and the monks have a massive stake in this because basically glastonbury doesn't have many relics it doesn't have um a huge amount of stuff that people want to see so by discovering arthur's tomb they are inventing a cash cow as well so as far as edward and the monks at glastonbury concerned everyone's a winner but that that tradition kind of lingers on and it's expressed most force you know most memorably in mallory where he he says yes you know arthur ended up being buried at glastonbury but men do say that he will come again and he quotes his famous phrase rex quondam rex quae futuris the

once and future king but it's interesting because that that i that idea was taken up by the first tudors who obviously had welsh lineage so when henry tudor has landed at milford haven and he's marching to bosworth there's talk of him as the new arthur as he's going across wales because it'll allow him to recruit troops and then henry the eighth loved all the stuff about arthur and it's hen Henry VIII who paid for this big round table that you see in Winchester, which he had done when Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, was visiting. He wanted to show it off and to show himself off as the new Arthur. Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, had grown up reading stories of Arthur in the Alhambra in Granada. So by that time, Arthur was this international brand that you sort of bought into

if you were a sort of courtly, chivalrous kind of person. And I think the image of Arthur that's painted on that table in Winchester is consciously designed to evoke the image of Henry VIII as well. I mean, the origins of that table, I think, again, goes back to Edward I's reign. And it's, you know, Edward is essentially building it as a model. And by the time to Edward I's reign, and Edward is essentially building it as a model. And by the time of Edward III's reign, it's come to be seen as the literal round table. Yeah, a round table. So, yes, and of course, Henry VIII's elder brother was called Arthur. And one of the interesting things is that periodically you get Princes of Wales being called Arthur, and they all die.

Only the real Arthur, Tom. Only the real Arthur can... Yeah. Anyway, we've got tons of questions. Let's have another one about the sword. Matthew Drake, he says, I watched Excalibur at a boy, perhaps at way too young an age, but I will be walking my lockdown puppy listening to this and I want to know if any of the mystery behind the sword is true

and if it exists, where does it rest? so where does the Excalibur come so Excalibur people often think Excalibur and the sword and stone are the same thing which of course they're not they're two different swords at what roughly at what point Tom do those two swords enter the story they must be sort of you know high middle ages inventions are they yes so Arthur has kind of various swords and the famous legend is that he is given it by the Lady of the Lake. And then when he dies, the famous account of that is in Mallory again. And it gets retold brilliantly by Tennyson. Sir Bedivere takes the sword and hurls it back.

And the hand dressed in white samite comes from the water and takes the sword and plunges back in um and that's what inspires the famous modbython joke in the holy grail about strange women lying in ponds distributing swords um being considered a reasonable basis for a system of government um but actually the joke points at the way in which swords are politically potent. So although you have this story that Arthur's sword Excalibur has vanished, and presumably when he comes again, he will have it at his side. Actually, there are other traditions that these swords are kind of relics that can be taken and used by people who need them. And the famous example of that is richard the lionheart who um is spectacularly not interested in king arthur because he takes this sword and when he meets

up with the um with the uh the king of sicily and um the king of sicily gives him kind of various gifts and richard the lionheart gives him king arthur's sword oh no he gives it away yeah yeah basically he's doing it because it's kind of massive one-arm friendship. Nobody can compete with King Arthur's sword. I mean, it really puts the King of Sicily in his place. I like to imagine him travelling with this huge cupboard full of King Arthur's swords.

You know, like sort of monastic relics or something. He's giving out to kings left, right and centre. Yes, yes. So, again, it's kind of a bit like the body of Arthur. You know, is the body of Arthur at Glastonbury

or is he in the Isle of Avalon waiting to come again? And likewise, is Arthur's sword in the lake with the Lady of the Lake waiting to be handed out again when he comes back?

Or is it something that Riz Zalanhart can give away as a kind of... Is it in some mafia boss's house in Sicily in Corleone

as we speak? But obviously, it's had a huge afterlife, hasn't it? I mean, the two examples I can think of are the sword that was broken in The Lord of the Rings, so Anduril, Aragorn's sword, which identifies him as the king. And the one that most people are familiar with, which is Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, which is given in Star Wars. And it's his inheritance. What, a sword of power?

It's inheritance from Darth Vader. You know, only he can wield it. And actually, Star Wars, the first Star Wars film, you know, the original, as we would know it, basically is an Arthurian story. The boy who's been adopted, who wields the sword and rediscovers his inheritance. I mean, in a way, that's actually Harry Potter on his wand. It's the sort of... That's the interesting thing about the Arthurian story, to me,

the fact that it's had this immense cultural footprint. Well, there's a good question here from Chris Cope, who asked, why is there such an enduring interest in this story? And, you know, you've written a lot about the power of popular stories, and particularly British popular stories. What do you think the source of the power is?

Well, Freud had this, Freud claimed that there was this thing called, I think he called it the family romance, though people will correct me if I'm wrong. He said children, when they reach an age, they reach an age of about 9, 10, 11, and boys particularly, when they fantasise, as part of their sort of breaking away from their parents, they fantasise that they're adopted

or that their real parents are somebody else. And they they often fantasize, they have a daydream that they are the children of rich and powerful people, and they have this hidden inheritance. Maybe that's about the point in your sort of growing up, that you become, you know, conscious of disappointments, or loneliness, or whatever, and you begin to create this sort of dream world for yourself. And you imagine that you've been disappointed by life and your true role lies somewhere else. And I think that's one of the key things to the Arthur story, isn't it? It's that the bit that people always remember is the story of the boy

who is overlooked and downtrodden by, you know, pushed around by Kay, who he has to be a squire for but that's that's because of th white isn't it i mean that's the sword in the stone and yeah but that's that's i think what kids often get in and then and then of course he has all the adventures and all the rest of it but i think the point at which kids the the thing that adults like and kids probably don't like is um lancelot and guinevere you know my my son sort of said just describes that very dismissively as the love and so he likes he loves all king arthur but he can't stand the love and i think that's the bit that obviously fascinated the pre-rephilites you know

this sort of doomed romance and all that sort of side of things and they're sort of drippy maidens and stuff um drippy maidens but why but i don't know what a lot yeah well i mean they're all sort of one thing by that point but why do you think it's lasted so long tom i mean why does it have this hold on the cultural imagination well i i think the ideal of camelelot, as you'll know, I mean, you know, Jackie Kennedy. Kennedy, yeah, Kennedy's. Described her husband's court as Camelot. The idea of a golden age where nights are bold, the glamour of it, the colour of it, the excitement of it um and then when that's combined with the tragic arc of arthur's story and this kind of tantalizing sense that it might come back again i think it's incredibly powerful powerful narrative and actually i do think that the story of lancelot and guinevere

is a crucial part of it um it certainly was in the middle ages because in a sense lancelot is i mean he's a kind of tragic figure because he he wants to be the very best that he can at everything so he wants to be the best knight the truest knight the truest knight to his liege lord and he wants to be the truest lover um so he is completely true to guinevere arthur's wife and that's the kind of the the tragedy is that he can't be both and so he fails to win the grail and then his his romance with guinevere ends up sundering the round table and it leads to the civil war that results in arthur's death or his departure to the isle of avalon or whatever and so the sense that the round table is destroyed by something that is noble and heroic,

i.e. Lancelot's desire to be the best, I think is powerful. And actually, I've copied this out because it's one of my absolute favourite passages of prose, and I don't think that we've had enough amazing passages of prose on this. Tom hasn't done enough recitals. It's from Mallory's, Mork D'Arthur Mallory, writes the kind of, you know,

the definitive summing up of the Arthurian romances in the 15th century against the backdrop of the Wars of the Roses. And this is Sir Hector, Lancelot's brother, who, when Lancelot dies, delivers this incredibly powerful threnody to him this kind of obituary um our Lancelot he said thou were head of all Christian knights and now I dare say said Sir Hector thou Sir Lancelot there thou liest that thou were never matched of earthly knight's hand

and thou were the courteous knight that ever bear shield and thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse and thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse. And thou were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou were the kindest man that ever struck with sword. And thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights. And thou was the meekest man, the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies. And thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest. That's great stuff, isn't it? Yeah, it's great stuff.

Fantastic. And I think that that's a model of heroism that, you know, we still are capable of admiring. And doomed heroism, because otherwise it would be nauseating. I mean, the doomedness is... So your punishment for taking over the podcast to start doing long recitals is that I get to read out Bill Jones's question, and Bill Jones says, Send Holland down the Joseph of Arimathea Holy Grail King Arthur Glastonbury Thorn Rabbit Hole. Go on, Tom.

Down you go, but you must come back. Well, the Holy Grail is part of the kind of romance tradition that we talked about. Chrétien de Troyes writes about it, and then it gets taken up over the course of the Middle Ages. It's assumed to be the cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper. And it's supposed to have been brought to Britain

by Joseph of Arimathea, who in legend comes to be cast as Jesus's uncle. And so that's the root of the story that when Jesus was a young boy, he came with Joseph of Arimathea, who was supposedly a trader. So that's the thing in Jerusalem, did those feet in ancient times. And it comes to be associated with Glastonbury. And again, the monks at Glastonbury prove very, very successful at kind of appropriating these Arthurian legends and these the kind of the hint of the weird um and the the allure of these legends last into the modern age and you can see it in kind of various

ways so you see it for instance in um T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. The Fisher King. The Fisher King, who supposedly has been struck a dolorous blow, which I think is such a fantastic and with his dolorous blow, all the land has become a wasteland and the attaining of the grail enables the land to be healed. And Eliot picks up on a book by a scholar called jesse weston who has written a book from ritual to romance which casts this as a kind of pagan metaphor that's been christianized and elliot then kind of puts that feeds that into um into the wasteland um but of course it's also there in um uh the film excalibur john bo Borman's film, which is probably, I think, the best cinematic portrayal, serious portrayal of the Arthurian legends.

You've also got Monty Python, of course, which is slightly less serious. But I think it's also there in the Glastonbury Festival. I think it's a crucial part of what makes the Glastonbury Festival what it is. The idea that this festival is taking place at a site that may have been the isle of avalon that may have been where jesus came that that um maybe where arthur is lying waiting to

come again the sense of the weird and the strange and the mysterious absolutely kind of infuses the sense of magic that um it's not going to come during the glastonbury festival as he may not come during like some you know rob during some Robbie Williams appearance or something. It would be amazing, wouldn't it? Headlining. It would be so disappointing for him. I mean, he'd emerge and Britain would not be as he had expected. Put it that way. And yet, Glastonbury, of all these sites,

so Tentagel and Winchester and all these other places that have been associated with Arthur, they're basically kind of dead. I mean, there, you know, there's no, the sense of romance has gone.

You go there as tourists, but Glastonbury, I think the, the vivid sense of magic is there in a way that a pilgrim going there in the middle ages might have experienced as well. I think it's a kind of very unique, distinctive place. I think the key cleavage in this podcast, actually, Tom, is that when push comes to shove,

you'd rather go to Glastonbury, to the festival, than to the tea room at Tintagel. And I'd rather go to the tea room at Tintagel. Possibly. Possibly. That's what makes the podcast work. I justify going to Glastonbury by saying that it was you know a historiographical exercise and tapping the sources of english myth you'd probably well you could claim for it then as a tax tax deductible expense um well so let's talk

about we've talked about films i think we should talk about books um do you have a favorite historical retelling of the Arthurian story? T.H. White. T.H. White. You know, all that stuff about the animals, when he starts changing into fish and things. A bit weird. I love it. I love it.

And I love all of them. And I love the weird one about the Book of Merlin. Yeah, that's too strange. Which never got published, and which he wrote against a backdrop. I think he wrote it in 1940. Yeah, absolutely. He'd become a pacifist, I think, hadn't he? He'd he wrote it in 1940. Yeah, absolutely. He'd become a pacifist, I think, hadn't he?

He'd become a pacifist. Yeah. Yeah. He saw the great theme of the Arthurian myth and therefore of the stories that he was telling as being how to avoid war. And I think that it just kind of heightens the power of it. But you're not a fan.

I find all that very strange, actually. I think T.H. White was a very strange man anyway um incredibly egotistical man and um yeah i the stuff with the wart at the beginning when he's the boy i mean that's the stuff that became the cartoon um that everybody remembers but the latest stuff i just find a little bit self-indulgent this the version of arthur i mean there's a brilliant version by rosemary supliff called sword at sunset i think yes which we mentioned on the yeah which I think is really, really good. But the... Somebody asked me to mention historical novels,

and he says these are his best books, and I completely agree with him. Bernard Cornwell, who some listeners may say, oh, well, he's just sort of mass market. You find his books in W.O. Smith's. But his trilogy, I think, about King Arthur is by far the best thing he's ever written. Have you read that? I haven't, no.

It's good. If you ever read... It's sort of... What he does is he brings out the Welshness of it, as writers often do these days, and he sort of has all the magic but in such a way that the people, the characters believe in the magic but you can kind of see through it

so you can see it as coincidence or as tricks or whatever. And he does it very very the atmosphere is very well conveyed anyway let's talk about politics let's talk about politics donny can i just follow up um yeah on the kind of the cultural influence because actually one thinking about the podcast we did about fascism yes the the story of of you know medieval figures with swords coming back and grails and all that kind of stuff. So the grail myth feeds into Wagner's operas. Of course, Parsifal, yeah. And thinking about T.H. White writing about Arthur in 1940. Yeah. In a way, it's the dog that doesn't bark in the night. The fact that actually Arthur is not, as far as I know, appropriated by fascists. Or if it is done, I mean, I expect there

were efforts. I don't know enough about it, but I think there probably were efforts, but they were so small scale. And maybe Arthur had become too deeply rooted. Do you think maybe so that he could resist sort of Wagnerization? I mean, you're right that there's sort of, we talked when we did about, when we did our fascism podcast, we talked about how fascism drew on modernism and sort of, but it also obviously drew on this sort of near medievalism, didn't it? So there were lots of knights and maidens. So Himmler's very into all this.

But as far as I know, the British fascists didn't kind of call themselves the sons of arthur or something no maybe they'd be more successful dress up in armor rather than black shirts yes if there are any potential fascist dictators listening this is your you know we've given you your brand um no i don't know i wonder whether fascism sorry i wonder whether king arthur had then been was too victorian um yes whether had then been, was too Victorian. Yes. Whether he was too identified with kind of William Morris-y people with beards.

Yeah, yeah. You know, Burne-Jones and stuff. So it wasn't really, yeah, so it wasn't really appropriate for kind of forward-looking, aggressive. There's nothing aggressive about the Arthurian legend, is there? I mean, they don't actually do that much fighting in this sort of canonical victorian there's a lot of swooning and sort of looking out of windows and you know combing their very long hair there's not a lot of people from a night yeah exactly actually what's what one of the most powerful moments in uh the mort d'artha is when the last battle where mordred and arthur slaughter each other and all their men and they're all dead and all the knights are at the round table.

And then almost for the first time, peasants appear in the narrative. And Mallory describes them creeping onto the battlefield and stripping them of their armour. And that's the only point that ordinary people appear in the story at all, I assume. Yeah, pretty much. It's interesting, isn't it? Because there are no, now that you mention it, there's no sense of the public in the Arthurian. They're just sort of yokels, cheering. And I think that's why, by and large,

I mean, a lot of historical fictionalisations of this tend to go back to the Dark Ages. That's what they, you know, it's Arthur as a warlord or Roman or whatever because then you can situate it back in the mud and the dirt yes and everything so tom i think we've um we haven't well we haven't exhausted arthur but we've probably exhausted our listeners patience um which is more important let's end with simon george's question simon george says basically does it matter if he was a real person he quotes quotes the man who shot Liberty Valance. This is the West, sir, when fact and legend collide, print the legend. So is the whole

conversation about the historical truth irrelevant, really? And is the myth the thing that matters? I think the question of whether he's real or not is part of the fascination. So in that sense, I mean, there's no way we can ever prove it. I think you've got to be agnostic about it ultimately I personally don't think he existed but I can't prove he didn't exist and I think that that is that's absolutely a part of the fascination of it the sense that you can situate

this extraordinary narrative perhaps at a historical moment but I think the fact that we don't know whether it's true or not is a pretty fundamental part of its appeal. What do you think? No, I think that's obviously,

the mystery of it is absolutely the core of it. I think, I mean, one of the things we talked about when we did our Stephen Fry Troy podcast, we talked about whether the legend of Troy would die. And actually, Arthur is one story that I don't think will ever die, or at least not in the foreseeable future. And it does live on in all the, I mean, you can see it in The Lord of the Rings,

you can see it in Star Wars and all these sort of great pop culture leviathans. And I think the afterlife, who cares about whether Arthur is real or not, because his afterlife is actually more interesting and arguably more important. Anyway. He comes again. He does indeed. Well, he keeps coming. That's all we've got time for today.

It's a subject that clearly fascinates a lot of you. So please do get in touch with us on Twitter if you've got any observations about what you've heard. We'll be back on Thursday because we've got two podcasts a week now and we've got another episode of The Rest Is History when the great Michael Wood will be with us talking all things China.

Bye for now. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.