The Rest Is History - 713. King Arthur: The Once & Future King (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 11, 2026

What is the historical truth behind the tales of King Arthur, Britain’s greatest myth? When did these stories begin, and with whom? And, is Arthur’s apocalyptic last battle based on an English historical reality from the 15th century? Join Tom and Dominic as they launch into one of the greatest historical mysteries of all time, and discover the truth behind the legends of King Arthur.    Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠ _______ This episode is sponsored by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Try Claude for free today at http://Claude.ai/restishistory. _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution

really goes well for ordinary people? So they asked over 100,000 people and what came back wasn't just fear. There was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions. Ask yours at clodd.aI slash rest is history. And keep thinking. Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesus into another place. And men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the Holy Cross. Yet I will not say that it shall be so, but rather I would say here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon the tomb this,

Hick, Yacet Arthurus, Rexquandam, Rexque Futurus. Here lies Arthur, the once and future king. The most stirring, the most haunting epitaph in all of English literature and arguably all of English history. So that comes at the end of the Mort D'Arthur, the great prose epic that was written by Sir Thomas Mallory during the Wars of the Roses. So in 15th century England was being torn apart by fighting for the crown.

And Mallor's great work is talking about a mystery that has haunted the British imagination, not necessarily just the English imagination, but the imagination of all the people in these islands for a millennium or more. And Mallory's epic, Tom, was called the Death of Arthur, the Mort D'Arthur for a very good... good reason. It was mourning.

A golden age that had already passed into legend, wasn't it? Yes, the golden age of the Round Table, a time when knights were at their boldest and ladies were at their fairest, and yet throughout Mallory's account of it,

the knowledge that the Round Table is going to end up broken and its knights piled up as corpses shadows the entire story. And it's the death of Arthur, or is it a death, after he's received a mortal wound from his son, Mordred, in the last battle that he will ever fight. This is what sets the seal

on the tragedy. But to repeat, is Arthur actually dead? This is the great mystery. And Mallory's account of his fate, which you just read out, you know, it's rich in tantalizing. ambiguities, because on what basis are men saying that he shall come again? And why on his tomb does it have that kind of enigmatic phrase, Rex Futurus, a future king? And what does Malary mean when he says that he personally believes that in this world Arthur changed his life? I mean, does that mean that he thinks that he died? Or is he talking about Arthur's translation to some other mysterious dimension, some mysterious realm. And I think it is an incredible passage because Mallory isn't endorsing this really quite

widespread hope that Arthur will come again, but nor is he rejecting it. And it's very eerie and very tantalizing. And I think a huge part about why the mystique of Arthur endures to this day. I don't know whether you agree. I completely agree. I fell in love with the stories of King Arthur when I, was very, very young because I had a really sort of basic children's version when I was probably five or six or something. King Arthur was my gateway drug into history. My love of King Arthur and

the stories of King Arthur predated any historical interest that I had. And of course, one of the things that people always love about King Arthur is precisely this idea that he's the once and future king, that he's sleeping and will come again to save the people of Britain in their hour of danger in their sort of darkest hour. But that's not unique to Arthur, is it? Lots of different cultures have stories like this. So, for example, Barbarossa, Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor. Now, we know he was real, which we don't necessarily know of Arthur. And Frederick Barbarossa, a third crusade, right? Yeah, he drowns. I think in northern Syria, swept away on a river. And he is said to lie asleep with his.

knights in this kind of mountain chain in Turingia. And brilliant details about this legend that he sat at this stone table for so long that his red beard, so hence Barbarossa, has sprouted and grown and the tendrils of it have woven their way through the stone of the table. And there are ravens flying around the mountaintop in which he is sitting. And when these ravens stop flying, so the story goes, he was. will emerge and he will save Germany and restore her to her ancient greatness. And of course, we know who loved that story.

It was the Nazis because that's why they gave Operation Barbarossa the name that they did, this idea of reclaiming ancient greatness. Indeed. But then there's the last Roman emperor, the last true emperor of Rome. So Constantine the 11th, so he falls in the siege of Constantinople, doesn't he? But he's also not dead. Am I wrong? His body is never found.

So it's, you know, there's a bit of a mystery there. And so the story is that an angel appeared and turned him into marble and hid him in a cave under the Golden Gate, one of the great gates, leads into Constantinople. And it is said that in due course he will awake and recapture Constantinople for Christ. So that's something that is in the offing. And then, Dominic, one that you absolutely loved, because I remember you talking about it in the series that we did in Portugal, is King Sebastian of Portugal. isn't that? Yeah, Dom Sebastiao. Yeah, so he was fighting in Morocco in the 16th century, 1578,

and he was very young and dashing. I think he was in his early 20s, wasn't he, 24 or something? And he disappeared. So that's a thrill. And again, the story in Portugal is one day Dom Sebastian would return, you know, sort of riding through the fog to rescue Portugal. Yeah, the early morning miss, isn't it, I think, and he will save Portugal. So obviously the idea of a kind of sleeping king, hiding in a cave or something, waiting to be summoned to rescue his country is quite a common one. But that's just by way of saying that none of these guys can compare for celebrity, international celebrity with Arthur. And this celebrity is just mad and huge and dates back to the Middle Ages. So there was a guy around 1200 who was writing an introduction.

to a book of Merlin's prophecies, and we'll be coming to them in due course in this series. And he said something on the lines of Arthur is famous everywhere. He's almost as famous in Asia as he is in Britain. And I assume he's probably talking there about the Crusader kingdoms. But I mean, he's the celebrity that Arthur has in the Middle Ages is absolutely massive. And you see, you know, in medieval times, romances, folk tales, the medieval equivalent of fan conventions across the whole of Christendums. across the whole of Christendom. Everybody is obsessed by it.

And it's fascinating that the older surviving sculptural portrait of Arthur and his knights isn't British. It appears on the north portal of the cathedral in Modena in north in Italy,

dated to, I think, around 11.30. And at almost the same time, you have a kind of mad story that is situating Arthur's sleeping place kind of not in Somerset or Scotland or anywhere in Britain. But in Mount Etna, and this is revealed by groom,

who had been chasing a bishop's runaway horse up the slopes of the volcano. And he'd gone into the volcano where he'd found Arthur reclining on a couch. And the king tells this groom that he'd been there a long time suffering from wounds he had received during his last battle against Mordred.

I mean, no explanations about how he had ended up in Sicily. You mentioned fan conventions. So people might have thought that was just a sort of random throwaway remark, but there really are fan conventions. Oh, they're effectively tournaments. So there's one in Beirut, Crusaders, 1223? Cyprus, it's the Lord of Beirut.

I mean, such a great title. So it's in 1223. And he stages this very trendsetting tournament in Cyprus, DeMarc, the knighting of his elder son. and the jousters dress up as knights from the roundtable. And this establishes a kind of European wide craze for Arthurian cosplay. And so you have these roundtable tournaments where everyone dresses up as Lancelot of Gawain or Arthur or whatever. And I guess it's a kind of mixture of fighting and fancy dress.

So very like the Rested History Festival that we stayed at Hampton Court this summer. I guess you'd say it's the kind of the original pan-European. kind of sporting institution, kind of the medieval champions league. It's that kind of sense of a shared sport that people from across Christendom can share in. But unlike sport, the Arthurian romance, or what becomes the Arthurian romance, has a kind of political and moral dimension. Does it not? A spiritual one even.

Yes. So very famously, in 1312, there was this French poet called Jacques de Longion. And he drew up a list of the nine examples. exemplars of chivalry. And he chose three pagans to illustrate, you know, the nobility of the classical world, three Jews, so these are biblical heroes, and three Christians. And together these constitute the nine worthies. And Arthur is the single British entry, and he is named as the first of the three Christian men. So he is the greatest of the Christian worthies. As you say, it's a measure not just of his fame, but of his kind of moral stature. And so I think it's, it's

It's unsurprising that when the first printing press is introduced in England in 1476, so again, that's against the backdrop of the Wars of the Roses, the merchant responsible for it very rapidly is looking around for something to publish about King Arthur. And this publisher is a guy called William Caxton, and he is a top entrepreneur. I mean, publishing is just one of the many irons that he has in the fire. And he has a very keen sense of what the public wants. And so he comes across this manuscript called the Mort D'Arthur, a posthumous manuscript left by a knight called Thomas Mallory who's since died. And he reads it and he says, oh, this is brilliant.

We've got to, we've got to publish this. And so because Mallory is already dead, Kaxston can essentially do what he like with it. He can trim it, edit it, mark it as he wants. And he does a tremendous job. And the result is a massive bestseller. And I think the Mortartha is the book more than anything else that fixes for the English-speaking world the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable as a kind of single sweeping narrative from the birth of Arthur, in fact, maybe even before the birth of Arthur, right the way up to the mystery of his end. And I'm guessing that the book that you read as a child is derived from it. Certainly the books that I read were.

So I had multiple ones. I'll tell you one that I had. It was by Antonia Fraser. it was the first book I think that she ever wrote as a very young woman it was brilliant I actually ended up

corresponding with her about it a few years ago Oh I read the Roger Lanssela Green one which had kind of wonderful woodcuts Oh that was very good So that was basically Mallory But it had bits from other romances as well

They were all great Anyway Mallory is tremendous Mallory's at the back of all of this You can't tell this story without Mallory Yeah If you think of all the novels That are written about Arthur all the kind of the TV series, the films, Excalibur, all that kind of stuff.

Basically, it is Mallory that is lying behind them all. Yeah, not just things are stentably about King Arthur, but I mean, Arthur is at the heart of Harry Potter and his wand, Luke Skywalker and his lightsaber, all of those kinds of things. I mean, the writers of these things themselves were often to say King Arthur is at the root of them, Aragon with a sword that was broken. There's this wonderful comment by Tom Shippey that the Arthurian legends of them, most enduring legacy of the Middle Ages.

Tom Shippey, the great writer about Tolkien. I mean, I think that's not untrue, because I would say that people who don't have a specialised interest in medieval history say will be more familiar with the sword in the stone or Camelot or the Holy Grail than they're likely to be with the names of kings who actually ruled in the Middle Ages. Of course. And there are two reasons why it's so interesting to us doing a history show. I guess, now, number one, I mean, Kaston himself mentioned this in the preface.

didn't he? He said, basically, why I want to publish a history of the said noble king and conqueror King Arthur is to show that he existed. And there are people out there, there are haters, losers, who say that King Arthur did not exist and are all such books as to be made of him be but feigned and fables. And of course, this is the issue that fascinates so many people to this day, right, in the 2020s. Was there a King Arthur? Who was he? Was he Ambrosius or Relyanus or whatever? was he some warlord? I mean, that is, I mean, I've, everybody is fascinated by that.

Even, surely, even the most desiccated academic working on Anglo-Saxon England or the fall of the Roman Empire or something. I mean, it is amazing when you look at books written by academics in that period for the general market. They all have, you know, the world of Arthur, the age of Arthur, whatever.

Yeah. And then they'll say, we don't know anything about it, but they put Arthur on the cover. Of course. Which I think is the measure of that. And we will be. trying to answer the question of whether Arthur existed, you know, who was he, who might have been in due course in the last episode of the series. But I think before we come to the

question of who the historical Arthur might have been, it is reasonable to concentrate on the legends, because I think it is these much more than what, you know, some historical Arthur might have been getting up to in the sixth century or whatever, which actually makes him such a significant topic of historical inquiry. Because without the legends, to be honest, I mean, who would care? Who would care about this otherwise obscure figure who might not even have existed? And again, just to emphasize

how madly popular the stories of Arthur were across Christendom. So around 1,200, again, there's this French poet. French poets are obsessed by Arthur. And this guy's called Jean Baudel. And he referred to these stories as the matter of Britain. There was also the matter of France, which were the stories of Charlemagne,

there was the matters of Rome, which is kind of classical stories. But the matter of Britain was the real obsession of people in medieval Christendom. And it's a Europe-wide addiction. And so this is the second reason in his introduction that Kaxton gives for saying why he wants to publish the Mort D'Arthur. Namely, and I quote, is more spoken of beyond the sea,

more books made of his noble acts than there be in England, as well in Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Greek as in French. And he might have added, in Latin, in Welsh, Cornish, German, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, Norse, Swedish, Icelandic, Hebrew and Ruthenian. Ruthenian? The only Slavic language into which the stories of Arthur were translated, but apparently they were massive in Ruthenia. It's great to get the Ruthenians on the show. And essentially, in medieval literature, there is no other theme that can compare for popularity with it.

And so I think before we come to the, you know, the historical author, the author of early medieval Britain, Let's have a look at the Arthur of Legend. And so our next two episodes will be looking at Sir Lancelot first and Gwynnevere and then at Merlin. And people may be wondering, what about the Holy Grail? We have actually already covered that. And if you want to listen to that, it is episode 346. But today, Dominic, we are looking at the last battle, the wounding of Arthur, the mystery of what happened to him. Did he die?

was he translated to a mysterious realm? Will he come again? Okay. And these, of course, drawn lots of different traditions and wellsprings, and so we'll be exploring all of these, won't we? But as we already said, Mallory is the centre of this. Mallory is the heart of it, the Mortartha. It's his account that is informed so many of the Hollywood films

in the 20th and 21st century retelling. So it's Mallory. that actually, even if people haven't read Mallory, he's there in your head whether you know it or not. So let's start with Mallory and what he tells us about Arthur, the Arthur in his great tale. So if you've seen the sword and the stone, even if you've seen the Disney cartoon of the Sword and the Stone,

you will know that Arthur grew up in obscurity, but he was in fact the trueborn king of Britain. And he grew up under the tutored, rather like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or all of these characters. Luke Skywalker with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Lake Skywalker and Obi-Wan-Kin is the absolutely the one, you know. In fact, everyone canobie has referred to in the first film as a wizard, as an old wizard.

Anyway, he grows up under Merlin, doesn't he? And Merlin becomes his advisor after he has pulled the sword from the stone and therefore demonstrated that he is the rightful king of Britain. And it is Merlin who helps him to defeat those who doubt his legitimacy. And it is Merlin who famously helps him to source a magical sword. So, to quote, Mallory, they rode till they came to a lake that was a fair water and broad. And in the midst, Arthur was wear of an arm clothed in white semit that held a fair sword in that hand. And he also sees a damsel, again, quote Mallory, going upon the lake, which basically means walking.

So very mysterious. And Merlin reveals to Arthur who this woman is. She is the lady of the lake who dwells in a rock beneath the lake. in as fair a palace as any on earth. And the Lady of the Lake gives Arthur a sword, and this sword is, of course, Excalibur. And this is the episode that prompts the famous comment in Monty Python, the Holy Grail, about what is it, women in ponds handing out swords is no basis for government.

I disagree. I mean, I think looking at the absolute shower we've had over the past few years, I think this would be an excellent way of getting a good leader. and Arthur is going to be an absolutely tremendous king. And it's not just Excalibur that the Lady of the Lake gives to Arthur. There's a marker of this. She also gives him a scabbard, which Merlin tells Arthur is worth much more than Excalibur, because whoever wears it shall lose no blood, be he never so wounded.

The whole episode is incredibly eerie. The Lady of the Lake is a very mysterious figure in the Mortartha, so at one point she's actually killed by a knight of the round table. but before you know, she's back on the scene and, you know, has she been resurrected? Are there multiple ladies of the lake? Do they kind of share the title? Unclear. And she keeps shimmering in and out of view throughout the Mortartha.

And this sense in the Mortartha that women are a very mysterious presence on the margins of what the men at the court of Arthur are doing is an absolute constant. And alongside the Lady of the Lake, you have another very powerful and uncanny woman to whom we're introduced very early on by Mallory. And this is Arthur's half-sister Morgan Le Fay, another kind of very famous name in Arthurian myth. So she's Arthur's half-sister. She'd been sent to a nunnery as a child where she'd learnt necromancy. It's not entirely clear how. She is as fair a lady as any might be. and she is consumed by an abiding hatred for Arthur, which is never explained,

but she's the kind of, I suppose, the ultimate nightmare elder sister, maybe about the whole of English literature. Right the way through the Maltartha, she's constantly scheming to have Arthur killed. And this is introduced very early on in the book. And her initial plot is that she's going to steal Excalibur and the Scabbard, which she does. And she then gives them to her lover, who is a knight called Aftainte. Akelon and Morgan then magics up exact replicas of Excalibur and the scabbard, which she kind of plants in Arthur's chambers so that he doesn't know that the real ones have been stolen.

And then Akelon and Arthur have a battle. Arthur is startled to find that even though he seems to be wearing this magical scabbard, he's losing loads of blood. The wounds are proving serious to him. But fortunately, the Lady of the Lake is on the scene and she comes to his rescue by alerting him to what Morgan has done, the trick that Morgan has pulled. And so Arthur then grapples with Akelon, wrestles the real Excalibur out of Acalon's hands, kills him and gets back not just Excalibur, but also the magical scabbard as well, which is the real prize. But Morgan,

she's not a girl to give up. Let's put it like that. So she promptly steals the scabbard a second time and she goes out and she just chucks it in a lake. And that's it. It's just kind of imperious malevolence and spite of an absolutely transcendent order. And so from this point on, Excalibur is in the hand of Arthur, but he doesn't have the scabbard. And so he can bleed. And so the kind of intimation of his mortality is set up right from the very beginning. And there are other sisters, aren't then? Quite a lot of versions, actually, of Arthur, especially for children.

The sisters were all conflated into one. So they're basically all conflated into Morgan Le Fay, who is, the best known. But actually in the original, there is another sister called Morghors, and she's a nightmare. So she's married to Lot, who is the king of Orkney, and they've had four sons, and the eldest of these is Gawain, who will go on to become with Lancelot, the greatest of Arthur's knights. Then you have Gaharis, Agravain, and the baby of the family is Gareth, who has beautiful hands. And shortly after Arthur has come to power, Lot not realizing who who Arthur is and what the relationship is between Arthur and Morghors, sends Morghors to go and spy on him at Arthur's court.

And to quote Mallory, all this time, King Arthur knew not King Lott's wife was his sister. And basically, if you read that in a medieval folk tale, you know what's coming. And so inevitably, this being the kind of story it is, Arthur ends up sleeping with Morgau's. And just as inevitably she ends up pregnant. And again, I'm not sure that this is the kind of detail that tended to feature in the children's accounts of the Arthurian legends that I read. No, I don't remember this at all. And Merlin, far from being sympathetic when this is revealed what Arthur has done, is very blunt about what this involuntary act of incest portends. Ye have done a thing that God is displeased with you, for ye have lain by your sister.

And on her, ye have begotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm. and the name of this child, once he's born on May Day, is Mordred. Right. The great villain of the story is. And Arthur's kind of arch enemy. I mean, talking villainy, it has to be said that Arthur does not behave well towards this little baby, who is, after all, his son. So when he's told that baby Mordred has been born, he has all the children begotten of lords and born of ladies on Mayday,

rounded up, put on a boat, and set a drift on the sea. So basically it's a kind of marine take on King Herod, killing the innocence of Bethlehem. And the ship is wrecked and all the babies are killed. They're all drowned, except for Mordred, who is somehow, somehow survives and is restored to his mother, Mugors, and then raised by her with his four elder brothers. So he is now the fifth of Mugors' five sons. And Mallory typically doesn't explain how this happens. It's just kind of obedient to the internal logic of the story.

And you just have to kind of roll with it. And equally puzzling is that when in due course, Mordred has grown up and, you know, he's attained manhood, he's become a knight, he goes to Arthur's court with his four brothers. And Arthur, you know, acknowledges him as his son and doesn't seem to have any issue whatsoever. It's like he's completely forgotten Merlin's prophecy. And Mordred is, you know, this guy who. Merlin has said, oh, he's absolute trouble, he's going to destroy you. He becomes the knight of the round table. He's not a famous knight.

He's not a star. He doesn't kind of win any famous quests. But he is clearly a ticking time bomb because basically he's a very malicious, vengeful man. And it's plain that, you know, he is trouble. And in due course, this is exactly what turns out to be the case. Because in the final book of the Mortartha, after we've had all these kind of glorious stories of the adventures, the quests and so on. Mordred's moment finally comes.

And what gives him his opportunity is that his father, King Arthur, has left Britain across the channel and is campaigning on the continent. And madly, bearing in mind the prophecy that Merlin had given him, Arthur had made Mordred regent in his absence. and while Arthur is away in France, Mordred starts spreading fake news. He says, Arthur is dead. And then to quote Mallory, he made a parliament and called the lords together. And there he made them to choose him king.

And so he was crowned Canterbury. And the news is brought to Arthur. He returns. He forces a landing. Mordred tries to oppose him. There's a great battle at Dover. Mordred loses and retreats. Then there's a second battle again.

Arthur wins. And this is fought at Barham. down just south of Canterbury. But Mordred has, he's kept his army together. He's retreated towards Wiltshire and the Salisbury area. Oh, brilliant. To have the Salisbury area back on the show. And so it was assigned betwixt King Arthur and Sir Mordred that they should meet upon a down beside Salisbury. So Salisbury Plain. And these negotiations are held between the father and the son and they seem to be going very well. The rightful king, the would-be usurper. It seems that they're going to arrive at terms. And wine was fetched and they drank together

but then there is disaster. And this I always remember incredibly vividly from the children's accounts that I read. So the knights on the two sides are drawn up on opposite sides of this plane and they're waiting as Arthur and Mordred kind of bury the hatchet. And while they're waiting, an adder emerges from a heath bush and it stings one of the knights on his heel. And the knight draws his sword to slay the adder. and when the knights on both sides, so the two armies drawn up facing each other, when they see this glinting of the sword in the sunlight, they all draw their swords in turn,

and then the two armies, Arthur's army, Mordred's army, descend on one another, and Mallory writes, never was their scene, a more doleful a battle in no Christian land. Droghy, well, the stage is set for that final showdown between Arthur and Mordred. So after the break, we will turn to the last battle. We'll find out what happens to Excalibur, and we will find out the truth behind Arthur's final journey to Avalon. This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps, many of them started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.

Yeah, there's a classic example of that, Tom, at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus, great pioneering voyage of discovery. And it is, of course, the Americas. So, you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people? Anthropic asked 100,000 people, and what came back wasn't just fear.

There was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions. Ask yours at clod.a.I. slash rest is history. And keep thinking. struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess a Prime Minister.

With high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context.

All the relevant context will be struck. as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order or frago a frago that says to kill the president of russia yes new from gollhanger

who is going to be able to pull this off you're my soldier are you sergeant tom mcduff an audio drama journey like no other men like duffy they are our most valuable weapons devised as a technically rigorous Geopolitical action thriller.

We have two times friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to The Rest is History. So all day long, the noise of battle rolled among the mountains by the winter sea.

And that, of course, is Alfred Lord Tennyson. So that's his first adaptation of the Mortarthur. and the Victorians adored Arthur. They loved everything to do with knights and chivalry in the Middle Ages and Mallory. Tennyson, however, he would disappoint you, Tom. He describes this battle as having taken place among the mountains by the winter sea. Now, I've been to Wiltshire in the Salisbury area, and I don't recall any mountains or is there any sea? No, it's very poor from Tennyson.

very sad he's erasing Salisbury from the from the narrative but I mean generally there is a good deal of confusion about where this last battle was fought as we will see there are a kind of a number of various candidates but Mallory said Mallory's saying it's on

Salisbury plane so let's go with that and he also tells us that it lasted all day and never stinted till the noble knights were laid to the cold earth and by nightfall 100,000 men are dead and only two knights of the round table are left. And one of these is Sir Lucan, who is described by Mallory as being Arthur's butler, which might conjure up a kind of slight down to an abbey sense.

I mean, basically he's the guy in charge of the king's table. And the other guy who's survived is Lucan's brother, Sir Bedavir. So these are the only guys from the whole of the round table who have survived. And Arthur is distraught. and he's mourning the slaughter and then looking around, he sees Sir Mordred leaning upon his sword among a great heap of dead men. And he picks up his spear.

And this is a tremendous detail, which again, I don't think featured in the children's books. This spear is called Rom. It's called Ron. It's called Ron. Yeah. So some people who haven't heard previous episodes will think you just had a stroke at that point.

I should explain that what Tom is doing. So much retro-reliquising. Arthur is holding Ron. Former Governor of California in the United States President, Mr. Reagan. Mordred, Mordred charges Ron. And Arthur skewers him with Ron. So, uh-huh. And to quote Mallory, when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death's wound,

he thrust himself with the might that he had up to the burr of King Arthur's spear, and right so he smote his father, King Arthur. And Dominant, there's a famous illustration by Arthur Rackham, which he did in 1917, so amid the carnage of the First World War, and it shows exactly this scene, and you have crows wheeling overhead, and the battle scene is like the Battle of the Somme or something. Or actually, it's the climax of John Borman's brilliant film, Excalibur, only in that it's the other way around.

It's Mordred who's holding the spear, I think, in that, and it's Arthur who works his way down the length of the spear. Anyway, kind of terrible moment. So Mordred falls down dead. and Arthur is left mortally wounded by this last fight. And Lucan, the butler, as a butler does, tries to help Arthur, pick him up and move him. But unfortunately, he dies after part of his guts fell out of his body. So that's the end of Lucan.

I mean, not a good way to go. And so of all Arthur's knights, now the only one left to Arthur is Srebber. And so Arthur orders him to take Excalibur and go with it to a nearby lake. and to throw the sword out into the water. And Bedivir takes a sword as he's been ordered, and he goes down to where the lake is. But then he looks at the sword, and he thinks, this is an excalibur.

I mean, you know, it's so beautiful, it's so rich, it's so glorious. Surely its time will come again. And so rather than throw it away, he hides it. And he then rides back to Arthur, and he says, well, I've got rid of the sword. And Arthur says, okay, if you did, what did you see? and Bedefair answers nothing but waves and winds. And Arthur is furious and tells him that he is lying and then orders him to, again, to go and

and throw the sword into the lake. But again, Bedevir can't bear to dispose of it. And again, he lies to Arthur. And again, Arthur, who is now, you know, absolutely furious, orders him to go and throw the sword out into the lake. And this time, Bedevir does obey. and he throws the sword out as far into the water as he can and a famous, famous moment, perhaps one of the most famous moments

in the whole of our theory and myth, there came an arm and a hand above the water and took it and clutched it and shook it thrice and brandished and then vanished with the sword into the water. Stuff of so many kind of 19th century paintings and stuff, isn't it? I mean, yeah, in Excalibur, it looks ludicrous because the special effects aren't up to it, but it is still such a tremendous moment.

I actually watched it before starting this episode to get myself into the mood. I feel so stirred by it. Yeah, well, we can tell. Bedivir returns to Arthur and says, yeah, okay, so I've seen this, you know, this hand rise up and everything. So Arthur knows it now that he's telling the truth. And then Arthur says, you know, we've delayed too long here. Help me down to the side of the lake. So Bedivir does and leads him down to the lake.

and they're waiting for Arthur, they find a barge with many fair ladies in it, all wearing black hoods. And among them are Morgan Le Fay and the Lady of the Lake. And Arthur is placed in the barge and he lays his head on his sister's lap. And then the queen said, Ah, my brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? And it's completely typical of Mallory that he gives no explanation as to why Morgan Lefe, who spent the whole of the Mortarthur trying to kill Arthur is now kind of mourning him, caring for him.

And I think Mallory's refusal to explain things that in a novel you would expect to be explained is a massive part of what the kind of the awe of mystery that surrounds the whole thing. And I think you get the feeling with this that Morgan has kind of, she's reverted to a kind of older, stranger, weird, register, as though. actually she is now in her true dimension because her true dimension are those margins that lie between life and death and that has why she's come for him. But it's one small point about that, though. I remember that very vividly from the children's books.

I also remember all the stuff about Mordred and him welcoming Mordred to his cause, even then Morda's going to kill him. And I have to say, in all that time, it never struck me as weird because, you know, young readers just completely take that, they're like, well, fine, if that's the story, that's the story. and I wonder whether Mallory's listeners were the same. It's kind of a bit weird, but that's the story. I think they were. And Mallory himself, there is this internal logic.

You know, they're in the sources. That's what he's going to do with it. Yeah, exactly. And that's the power of it. It's incredibly haunting. And what is also haunting is the fact that the barge now starts to pull away, and Bedivir is left alone on the, you know, on the shore. And he calls after his love.

Lord. And Arthur answers him by revealing his destination. And it's not a cave. It's not Mount Etna. It is the veil of Avillion. And he is going to Avilion there to be healed of his wound. And Avillian, of course, is Avalon. And away he sails accompanied by the weeping of Morgan, the weeping of the lady in the lake, or the other ladies. And here is how Tennyson in his unbelievably powerful and beautiful poem on the topic, how he concludes this scene. Long stood Sbedevir revolving many memories till the hull looked one black dot against the verge of dawn and on the mere the wailing died away. God, I feel tears, manly tears, rising to the eye.

So lots to unpick here. Is there a historical basis for this idea of this last battle, the veil of Avillion or Avalon and of course the question about whether Arthur will come again, where that comes from. So let's start with the last battle, this idea of a Titanic showdown. Now this is actually one of the oldest facts about Arthur,

isn't it? And has clearly a very, well, potentially some kind of factual basis. I mean, I know we'll come to all this. Where does it come from the idea of a last battle? Well, it comes from Wales. And just to say, the rest of this series, there is going to be so much Welsh history.

Too much, perhaps. Fans of Welsh feminism is going to be a lot of Welsh women. This is peak restis history. Basically, Welsh history, we have got it. So, the mention of the last battle, it's originally mentioned in a collection of annals,

so details of what happens, you know, year on, year out. And these are called the Anales Cambriae, the annals of Wales. And it's possibly, in fact, I think probably, the second oldest source we have for Arthur, and it dates to the mid-10th century. And it's a chronological record of events beginning in AD447, and the entry for 537 reads,

The Battle of Camelon, in which Arthur and Medrott, so that's Mordred, fell, and there was a great dying in Britain and Ireland, and it is predictably enigmatic, because nothing about the early sources for Arthur are self-evident. So it gives us no clue as to where Camelan might have been. The literal meaning of it is crooked bank, so presumably it's by a river. I mean, that would seem a kind of a reasonable supposition, I think. And people will note that it doesn't indicate actually who Medriot was, or indeed who Arthur was, whether he was Arthur's ally or enemy and who, if anyone, won the battle.

It just says that they both died in this battle. But no doubt, Tom, this is. Welsh history? It's certainly a Welsh source. It's a Welsh tradition. Whether it's Welsh history, I mean, we will see. But it's a Welsh tradition and it definitely, it's in Welsh poetry, dating probably a century after this, so kind of mid-11th century, that we get the first illusions to a rivalry between Arthur and Medrout. But the really decisive contribution is made by a writer who we will be referring to a lot over the course of this. series, and he is also a kind of very Welsh figure because he takes his name from a Welsh

town. And this is a 12th century cleric called Geoffrey of Monmouth. And Geoffrey of Monmouth writes the book that kind of lights the touch paper of Arthur Mania. And it's a history of the Kings of Britain that ranges from Brutus, who is a Trojan, who arrives in Britain and kills all the giants, and it goes all the way up to Athelstan, so the Anglo-Saxon king in the 10th century.

And the star turn in this history is the first full-length account of the reign of King Arthur. And it is impossible to over-emphasize what a massive bestseller this book was. And within a generation of its appearance, it had swept the whole of Christendom. And it is this book that basically inspires the Europe-wide obsession with Arthur. And over 200 copies of the manuscript survive, which for a book that is not theological,

not a translation of a Latin classic, is mad. There's no kind of secular text that features in so many manuscripts. And Jeffrey called his book a history, but I think it's fairer to describe it as a fantasy. And he's basically the Tolkien, the J.K. Rowling of his day. He's an author from Britain who creates this entire world of wonder and adventure that is so addictive, so readable, that it makes him an international literary superstar. And it's Jeffrey in this book, this history of the Kings of Britain, who makes two crucial contributions to what would become the canonical version of the last battle. and Arthur's ultimate fate. But when you say, when you say he makes these contributions,

if you were being skeptical, you would say he's making loads of stuff up. Yes. Now, yeah, well, obviously the whole course of the series will be exploring whether Jeffrey of Monmouth is basically inventing how to nowhere. Spoiler alert, he is making it up. I mean, let's be upfront about that.

He is making up loads and loads of stuff. Not everything, but he is making up a lot. So, for example, it's Geoffrey in Monmouth who creates the idea, doesn't he, that Mordred and Arthur are related. He's trying to explain the relationship between them. But in this case, in Geoffrey, Mordred is Arthur's nephew, right? Not his son. Yeah, but there's still a kind of blood relation there. It's Geoffrey who introduces Mordred as the regent that Arthur leaves behind when he goes to the continent.

It's Geoffrey who first develops the theme of Mordred trying to steal Arthur's throne, Arthur returning to reclaim it and then this great last battle. So this is the Battle of Camelan as mentioned in the the Annals of Wales and Geoffrey is much more specific about the location of this battle

than the Annals of Wales had been. He says that it was fought beside the River Camlam so it's going to riff on Camelan and this is the River Camel in Cornwall and specifically at a place called Slaughter Bridge which I visited it

And I have to say, it's an absolutely lovely spot for a battle. You know, if you've got to have your court wiped out, that's a great place to have it wiped out. And it features a sixth century memorial stone. So again, the kind of right period, although it has absolutely nothing to do with Arthur. So that's a shame. But it is the right period. So there are other places that have been identified with Camlan. It's the kind of detail that Arthurian scholars love to kind of explore.

So one very popular location is Cadbury Castle in Somerset, which stands beside the river Cam. That's not really a castle so much as a hill, right? It's like a, it's an Iron Age hill fort. It's an Iron Age hill fort. And we will be coming to this in Part 4. So Cadbury Castle fans tune into that. There is a place called Camlin in Gwynid. Maybe that's possible.

I mean, it is called Camberglana. Which is Castle Steads on Hadrian's wall. And the idea that Arthur fought battles are in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall is very popular, again, as we will be seeing in our fourth episode. But it is reasonable, I think, to say at this point. The search for the historical Arthur is basically like searching for a needle that may not exist in a haystack. So that is a problem with the sources. So we don't really know where Camelon was. It's the honest truth, I think.

And I don't think we ever will. Although I want to tempt the listeners, we will, of course, be revealing all in the final episode. Yeah, we will. For the purposes of this episode, we don't know. But maybe we can persuade Tom to pronounce a definitive verdict in episode four. What about the other thing that Geoffrey contributes, or indeed makes up, the Isle of Avalon.

So we'll reveal you on. Yeah, so Geoffrey's definitely the guy who introduces Avalon into the mix. Whether he makes it up from scratch, we will see. So Jeffrey writes in his history that Arthur, our renowned king, was mortally wounded and carried off to the Isle of Avalon so that his wounds might be attended to. And of course, it is, you know, as so often, very cryptic. He doesn't say whether Arthur was healed of his mortal wounds. Doesn't say where the Isle of Avalon was.

So these are kind of twin mysteries that he's very happy to leave hanging. And the fact that Jeffrey doesn't say where the Isle of Avalon is means that over the course of the 12th century this book has come out it's going great guns everyone's absolutely obsessed by it and so obviously people do start to puzzle over where Avalon might be

and this for well for some people starts to present an irresistible opportunity so let's move forward from the publication of Geoffrey's history in the late 1130s to 1184 so half a century on

and in this year a devastating fire breaks out at a 400-year-old abbey at a place in Somerset called Glastonbury. I wanted if we'd be into Glastonbury. This abbey stands on elevated land above the Somerset levels. So one of the reasons why it's always said muddy at Glastonbury at the festival is because the whole area is naturally very wet. And back in the 12th century, the Somerset levels are a kind of stretch of fens and marshes that for much of the year turns Glastonbury into a kind of island.

And so it's this kind of setting that Glastonbury has amid these misty wetlands, which gives it a very haunting and otherworldly air. And wherever you have a haunting and otherworldly air, you tend to have pilgrims arriving because it gives you a sense of the, well, the sacral, I guess. The monks at Glastonbury Abbey, they've got this very ancient church made of wood. it's been a venerable centre of pilgrimage. And so the fact that it then burns down is an absolute disaster because it's the oldest and most sacred part of the abbey complex

that has gone up in flames. And basically it removes their entire source of income. So the monks desperately need to rebuild their abbey. And if they're going to rebuild it, then they need the money to do so. And so they turn to the king of England, who at the time is Henry II, the first Plantagenet King,

ruler of an empire that covers not just much of Britain but also half of France and so he should have lots of money and sure enough Henry says yeah sure I'll give you some money but then unfortunately in 1189 Henry the 2nd dies and is succeeded by his son Richard the first Richard the Lionheart and Richard the Lionheart is he's not really into building abbeys but he's really into his crusades and so all this money that was going to go on repairing this burnt abbey is now being spent on raising an army to go on the third crusade. And so the monks are left out of pocket. They need a new source of income. And then miraculously, Dominic, miraculously, in 1191, they find an alternative source of income. And to be

precise, they find the bones of an enormous man in a coffin that had been hollowed out from an oak tree. There is a stone slab and beneath this slab there is a cross made of lead. And on the cross written in Latin are these fateful words. Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the island of Avalon. God, it's great that the coffin

has that written out to eradicate any possible doubt. And what a moment for it to at the point of them they needed money. Yeah. Incredible stroke of luck. This is huge for them,

right? I mean, they can basically turn themselves into, well, one of the great tourist attractions in northwestern Europe. Yeah. Firstly, they've got the bones of King Arthur, the most famous king in Europe. And they have now successfully identified Glastonbury with the mysterious island of Avalon. So basically, you know, brilliant. Open up your checkbooks. Caching.

So they can start using this to make Glastonbury a kind of massive tourist attraction, which is what they do. But if it's massive for the monks of Glastonbury, it is also. massive for the English monarchy, because the kings of England can now appropriate Arthur and the stories that are told about him for their own purposes. And the king who really recognises the potential for this is Edward I. So the Hammer of the Scots, but also the guy who conquers Wales. And in 1278, on Easter Monday, Edward I and his wife, Eleanor of Castile, they come to Glastonbury. And they preside over the

formal re-internment of Arthur and his queen, Gwynnevere, whose bones had been found, you know, inverted commas, by the monks lying beside the bones of this colossal guy who the monks are saying is Arthur. Arthur and Gwynavir are laid to rest in a great black marble tomb that's been constructed before the high altar of the abbey in Glastonbury, and Edward has wrapped Arthur's bones in silk, and Eleanor has wrapped Gwynnevere's bones in silk. And the propaganda value of this to Edward is immeasurable because it helps him with a problem that has been confronting his dynasty for almost a century.

And basically, Edward, you know, he rules by right of dissent from William the Conqueror. The problem is, though, that he has lost Normandy. His grandfather, King John, had lost it to the French king. And so this means that Edward and his barons are now cut off from there. ancestral homeland. And in this context, tapping into the whole myth of Arthur is an absolute genius move because it enables Edward to cast himself as the air of this kind of ancient, glorious king who had ruled not just England, but a unified Britain. So Wales and Scotland as well as England. And actually, it's Wales when Edward comes to Glastonbury to re-bury, to re-bury Arthur

and Gwynnevere that is uppermost in his mind. Because the previous year, so that's 1277, Edward had led a massive expedition against Hulwellyn of Griffith, who, as events will turn out, is going to be the last independent prince of Wales. And this invasion of Wales, the conquest of Wales, will culminate in 1282 with the death of Llewellyn in an ambush, and then two years later, in 1284 with Edward's official annexation of Wales. He is going to rule as Wales is king from this point on.

And so in this context, you know, you can see absolutely how, you know, his appropriation of these supposed bones of Arthur is a masterstroke because it helps him by the fact that Arthur's been found. He's not going to come again. He's not, you know, waiting to draw his sword and come to the rescue of the Welsh. he can be put in a tomb in Glastonbury and it scotches this deeply held belief that the Welsh and the Cornish and the Bretons have all had

that Arthur isn't dead and that he's going to come again and just to say that this particular tradition like the tradition about the last battle being fought at Camelan is an authentically ancient one and we know this because back in 1113 a group of French clergymen from Leon had come to England to try and raise money for a church, and they'd gone to Cornwall.

And while they were there, they got into a massive punch-up with a load of Cornish people who were very offended by one of these French clergymen laughing at the idea that Arthur might come again. The French found this ridiculous. Cornish very offended. It's a big fight about it. And we know from a poem written in the 10th century in Wales that Arthur's grave was described as a wonder and it's a wonder because it can't be found. And if it can't be found, then again,

there's the hint of the suggestion that maybe Arthur isn't in his grave. And again, you have the sense, I think, reaching back centuries before Edward burying Arthur's supposed bones of Arthur as this kind of hero who is unbound by the limits of death. But Edward's reburrying has multiple political functions, doesn't it? Because on the one hand, it's, as you say, dispelling once and for all the idea that there's a kind of Welsh hero who's going to return but at the same time he's appropriating Arthur for an English monarchy

like Ptolemy making off with the body you know the corpse of Alexander the Great Edward I first is saying I have Arthur he is here he is mine and actually Arthur's ambition to rule Arthur's supposed ambition Arthur ruled all Britain well that's what Edward the first wants to do

yeah so he's conquered Wales and then he goes off to Hammers the Scots and he's consciously framing himself as the heir of Arthur. And so the corollary of that is that the English king starts to appropriate Arthur as an English hero. And so Edward is staging roundtable tournaments in Wales. Then maybe Edward I, maybe his grandson, Edward III, physically constructs a roundtable. This is the round table in Winchester. Yeah, so I think it gets repainted by Henry the 8th, doesn't it?

But it's definitely kind of dates from the 13th century. Listeners to the series that we did on the Hundred Years' War may remember how important orders of chivalry are to Edward III. And to all the kind of English knights who are fighting in the Hundred Years' War, this notion of themselves as, you know, the knights of a new Arthur crossing the sea as Arthur and his knights had done is incredibly important in animating. notions of English chivalry, notions that England has a kind of romantic history that its kings can draw on in wars with, you know, even the King of France, that the King of England can go toe to toe with the King of France. And so by the time we get to Mallory, Mallory, I mean, there's precious little Welshness in Mallory's more, D'Arthur, is there? Yeah, it's all England. And so the sword in the stone, the most famous story in Mallory, it's framed, you know, the lettering on the stone reads, who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England.

So not Britain, England. So they found Arthur. They know that he went return. He's buried at Glastonbury, and he's become an enormously important sort of propaganda tool for the English monarchy. And yet the idea of his return, the idea that once and a future king does not go away. because it's still there in Mallory. So why doesn't it go away if they know that he's dead? Well, I think a possible clue to that is given actually in the very last sentence of the Mortartha.

And that tells us that, and I quote, this book was ended the ninth year of the reign of King Edward IV by Sir Thomas Mallory Knight. And this equates to 1469 or possibly the early months of 1470, which is a period of immense and escalating political. instability in England because it's the build-up to a fresh spasm of violence that will culminate in open war. And this is part of the English civil war that is known as the Wars of the Roses. So it's Lancaster against York.

The emblem of Lancaster is the red rose. The emblem of York is the white rose. And the Lancasterian king is Henry VIII. He has been deposed, locked up in the Tower of London. by the Yorkist king, Edward V. Fourth, who has usurped Henry VI's throne and is now claiming to rule England and has done so basically for a decade. But fresh instability, Edward VIII is going to be cast into exile for a few months and then he'll come back, reclaim the throne and end up murdering Henry VIII. And so Mallory is finishing his book in the buildup to this kind of great, you know, convulsive moment in the history of 15th century England. And Mallory, in some sense that is not entirely clear, seems to be implicated in the violence of this period.

Unfortunately, the details are quite murky, but we know from the evidence of the Mortarthur itself that the author was writing it in prison, because periodically throughout the Mortartha, he is saying as much. There has been, over the past century, quite a lot of scholarly disagreement as to which of the various tombs. Mallorries who were kind of kicking around in mid-15th century England the Thomas Mallory who wrote the Mort D'Arthur was. But I think nowadays the overwhelming consensus is that our Thomas Mallory was a knight from Warwickshire from Newbold Reville. And this is a guy who from the court records clearly did have a certain taste for trouble. and all of this is laid out in the landmark study of the Life and Times of Sir Thomas Mallory, the title of the book, and it's by PJC Field. And it came out, I think, about three decades ago, but it's still basically pretty unchallenged in its conclusions that it is this guy.

It's the knight from Newbold Revell. And in the 1450s, this particular Mallory was being kept in a range of prisons in London. So the Marshall Sea, the Tower of London, Newgate Prison, and he's being kept there by the government, which at this point is Lancasterian. Henry de Sikv is on the throne. But then Edward V. Fourth comes to the throne. And between 1468 and 1470, he is issuing four general pardons in succession. But in all of these four general pardons, Thomas Mallory Knight is specifically excluded. and the measure of what a big deal this is.

Other people who are excluded in this pardon include Henry the 6th, and Margaret Vanjou, his wife, and Edward of the Prince of Wales, who is his son. So Mallory is being ranked among the basically, you know, the Royal, the Lancastrian royal family. So it's presumably on Edward the fourth's orders that Mallory was being kept in prison while he was writing the Mortartha. So the mystery is that in the first decade, he seems to be in, he's in prison on the orders of Henry VI, the Lancastrian.

And then in the second decade, he's being kept in prison on the orders of Edward VIII, the Yorkist. And so there's a puzzle as to why this would be. And the explanation that Field gives in his book is that Mallory's author is a notably uncensorious person. And he proposes that Mallory's sympathies were aroused less by causes than by individuals behaving chivalrously in difficult circumstances. So in other words, he perhaps

he was anti-Lancastrian and then he feels sorry for Henry VI so he switches sides. So he always savages the underdog in such a way as to get himself arrested and incarcerated. Well, you're sounding cynical, but I think there is, you know, there is a certain degree of evidence to back this up in the Mortarthur itself.

So Mordred obviously stages this coup against the rightful king in the Morda. And I don't think you need, to identify this coup against Arthur as somehow a kind of allegory for the Wars of the Roses, the Behaviour of the Fourth against Henry the 6th. To recognise that Mallory's account of the Civil War in the Mortartha is, I think, clearly informed by the experience of civil war that England is going through in the 15th century, the Wars of the Roses and so on.

Yeah, that makes total sense. I find that very plausible. The details that we cited at the beginning of this episode of Mordred laying claim to the throne, he holds a parliament. You know, he summons the commons, all this kind of stuff. It's very 15th century. It bears no relationship to what was going on in the 6th century. And Mordred laying siege to the Tower of London. Mallory describes him making many assaults and throwing engines under them and shooting great guns.

So, you know, that's amazing. The kind of artillery in the same time as the round table. And Mallory writes that the people of England swing this way and that in their loyalties. So to Arthur to Mordred, to Arthur to Mordred. And Mallory complains the people of England were so newfangle. And newfangled in the Middle Ages means fond of novelty. Yeah, changeable and fitish. They're very changeable.

They no sooner have one leader than they want to get rid of him. Yeah. Like now, frankly. Yeah. And there's a very, you know, haunting descriptions of the last battle. that, I mean, has the faint hint of lived experience. So after the last battle, the knights are lying in great tangles across the battlefield. Luters steal out onto the field by moonlight to strip the dead of their belongings.

And Mallory writes, who that were not dead all out there, they slew them for their harness and their riches. And I think the point is making is that the collapse of Arthur's realm into ruin, you know, it's not just Mordred's fault. Mordred has taken advantage of a fickleness that he sees as being endemic to the English. He kind of laments it was the old custom and usages of this land. And men say that we of this land have not yet lost that custom. Alas, this is a great default of us, Englishmen, for there may nothing please us no term. But you can see why he would be writing this in this context, right? in the late 15th century

when, I mean, it's extraordinarily turbulent, I mean, it's fun to read about, but presumably not tremendous fun to have lived through, this period of chaotic leadership, Lancasteran and then Yorkist Kings rising and falling, coups, plots, betrayals,

battles. So effectively, the Mortartha, in that sense, is not a neither a fiction nor a historical record, so much as a kind of work of political commentary, almost, a kind of mirror to the woes of 15th century England. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the kind of the collapse of England from the glory days of Henry

the 5th to the bloodletting of Tauten and Tewksbury, I think, I mean, is it possible to think that it isn't there in the back of Mallory's mind? And I think that for that reason, you can understand that the notion that Arthur might come again and redeem his country is something that would have had a peculiar resonance and not just for Mallory, but for everyone in England at the time. I think today people think that. It's how people who present the rest of politics think about David Miliband. Oh, God.

He's not dead. He's only, he's not dead. I mean, he may seem dead because he's so uninteresting. Holding his banana like Excalibur. One day you'll return. I mean, I kind of feel, you know, if Arthur's going to come back now is as good a time as any. Absolutely.

Yeah. So, that's the more Darthy. the kind of 15th century mirror. These are the origins in Malar's own lifetime, and the politics of Malarist lifetime. But there's so much more to explore, isn't there? So we haven't yet really got into the round table and its knights. And specifically, the most, well, the most celebrated,

but also perhaps the most controversial, perhaps some would say the most overrated of all his knights. And that's Salonsalot. Salernsort is not overrated Dominic. Salonsoly, he's absolutely banging. He's a show pony. Anyway, right, well, this is setting up nicely, the tension that will be simmering in the next episode

as we explore the origins of Sir Lancelot, whether he was quite as heroic as is cracked up to be, and what on earth is going on with Lancelot and Gwynnevere, and why is Arthur not doing anything about it? So, if you want to find out about Salerncelot, if you want the truth about Merlin, and if you want us, if you want us the spectacle of Tom Holland, throwing caution to the winds,

identifying the historical Arthur, explaining exactly where Camilla was, all of this, solving a mystery that has perplexed, great minds for hundreds of years. That's going to come in the fourth episode. If you're a member of the Restis History Club, so that is our very own roundtable

of the best and the brightest, some of the great people of the modern world, they can hear those episodes right now. You can join them, and the way to do that is to go to the rest is history.com, to stare the sword and the stone in the face, to draw the sword,

or alternatively to sign up to the club and give us your details. And then you will get those three episodes, you'll get your membership on the round table and you'll get supplementary benefits in the form of the right to join the quest for the Holy Grail. Of all the metaphors with which we've tried to shroud this commercial offer, I think this is probably the most ill-conceived and shambolic. Anyway, that's all to come.

Loads to look forward to. We will see you next time. Thank you very much, Tom, and goodbye. Bye-bye.