You're Dead to Me - Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Europe by Dr Mary Bateman and comedian Mike Wozniak to learn all about the legends of King Arthur.Most of us have heard of Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. But where do these legends come from? Arthur first appears in the writings of a 9th-Century monk, but he’s not the king we know today: no Merlin or Lancelot, no Excalibur, and no Camelot. These elements were added later, as the legends were retold and rewritten across Europe.This episode traces the stories of Arthur and his knights from their early medieval origins, exploring the changes made as they were adapted over the centuries by everyone from French romance authors to Victorian poets, and taking in some famous medieval texts, including the Welsh Mabinogion and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, as well as some lesser-known tales. Along the way, we also look at the places in modern Britain that still bear Arthurian names and the wacky artefacts that have been associated with the legendary king, and ask the crucial question: did King Arthur really exist? If you’re a fan of heroic quests, knights in shining armour and fantastical medieval stories, you’ll love our episode on the legends of King Arthur.If you want more from Mike Wozniak, check out our episode on Charles Dickens at Christmas. And for more lovely legends, listen to our episodes on Atlantis and Norse Literature.You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Cusworth and Jon Norman-Mason Written by: Jon Norman-Mason, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

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seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are settling our noble steeds and galloping back to the Middle Ages in search of the legendary King Arthur. And to help us on our quest, we have two chivalrous companions at arms. In History Corner, she's a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where her research focuses on the literature of late medieval and early modern England. Luckily for us, she's also the author of the prize-winning book Local Places and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales 1400 to 1700. It's Dr Mary Bateman. Welcome, Mary. Hi, thank you so much. What a joy to be here. And in Comedy Corner, making a triumphant return to the show, he's a comedian, an actor, a podcaster.

You'll have seen him in Taskmaster, Man Down, and again in Taskmaster as Rose Matafayo's assistant on the wonderful Junior Taskmaster, which is lovely. Plus you'll have heard his dulcet tones on many podcasts, including my absolute fave comedy podcast, Three Bean Salad. Check it out. But you'll know him best from our previous episodes, including our festive special about Charles Dickens himself. It's Mike Wozniak welcome back Mike! Thank you very much for having me back I'm very excited I'm particularly excited about the topic. Interesting I mean you're a total legend but King Arthur total legend what do you know? I think it's the sort of thing you carry through your life if you've grown up in Britain oh yeah I know about that but do I know about it I

don't know that's partly why I'm so excited to be here. I think it's a huge subject, so there's quite a lot you can know without knowing the details. Yeah, and is it just because I'm familiar with it? Is it just because of some sort of Osborne book as a kid or because I played a King Arthur battle as a ten-year-old? It's so familiar, but I doubt there's any detail. I'm very excited about getting into it, hard. We'll find out if there's any detail. So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I think like Mike,

you definitely would have heard of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin. Most people will have seen an Arthurian screen adaptation, I think. That's your Disney sword and the stone, your boisterous King Arthur with Keira Knightley and Clive Owen, your John Bormans weird and wonderful Excalibur. You've got the the kid who would be king, you've got the sing-along Camelot, you've got the BBC series Merlin, there's Dev Patel in the swoon-worthy Sir

Gawain and the Green Knight, quite weird but good. Obviously the best Arthurian movie ever is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A film I love so much I wrote my master's thesis about it. I am on home turf today. Finally something I know about. And that's not mentioning all the operas, plays, poems, video games, paintings and books about King Arthur. But where do these stories come from? Was the medieval Arthur the same as our Arthur today? And just how big was a round table anyway? Ooh, let's find out. Right, Dr. Mary, Hollywood's vision of Arthur,

Arthuriana, I think is what we call it, the collective world of King Arthur. Hollywood makes it all sort of shiny armor, knights riding around, ladies in pointy hats, dangerous forests. It's very 14th century. Is that where we start our quest for King Arthur? No, absolutely not and actually the first mentions that we really get of a possible Arthur figure are a lot earlier

than this and they suggest Arthur is a lot earlier than this. They place him in kind of post-Roman Britain okay so just after Emperor Norius has withdrawn troops in 410, there's that couple of hundred years that we often hear called the Dark Ages. Yeah, I know, I feel the same. This is when some of the earliest texts place Arthur's rule as having happened, which makes sense because the province of Britannia is being invaded and raided by a series of different groups. You have the Picts and the Scots from the north and you've also got Angles, Saxons, Jutes coming in, those Germanic groups who would form

the first kingdoms in England. Britain needs a hero and so there are lots of bits of poetry written about heroes and this is where we see the first mention of Arthur. So the earliest texts we have about him seem to suggest he might have been a military leader of some sort in post-Roman Britain. We're talking sort of 450 to 550 CE. So about a thousand years earlier than your pointy hats. Okay. Yeah.

And they're written at the time or they're written later? Key question. They're a bit later. They're sort of set at the time, aren't they? Yeah, they are quite a bit later. Yeah, so the earliest references to Arthur are very enigmatic and fragmentary, which just add to his appeal, really. There is a very early Welsh poem, now I say Welsh, but we think it was written in the very, very north, kind of south of Scotland, north of England, called Ogadoghyn.

It's part of a bigger text by a poet called Onirin. It's a series of laments about fallen soldiers who've been involved in great battles. And in Agadothin, which is about this battle that we think happened somewhere in Nicaragua in modern-day Yorkshire, there are lots of men who fall. And one of them has a very Arthur-y sounding name, but he's not Arthur. And we're told he's not Arthur because the poet says that his name was Gwarthor but he was no Arthur. Which is really interesting because it suggests that Arthur isn't well known enough that he can just be used offhand like that as a point of comparison. So he likes the poet likes this guy? Yeah he's commemorating him but no Arthur. It's a bit of a backhanded. It's a bit mean isn't it?

What's a guy gotta do? And the thing about this poem is we don't know how old it really is because as with a lot of these early Welsh texts that we'll talk about today they're not written down until quite a long time we think after they were originally being circulated and composed orally and to make matters more confusing there's two versions of a good Arthur as well and one of them does not mention Arthur so that makes it even more enigmatic. So King Arthur, not necessarily a king, possibly a Roman, might be a Briton or a Romano-British. Just to return to these early texts, the really important mention, the first detailed mention we get of Arthur comes quite a bit later in around 830 and it's in this text called the history of the Britons. For a long time we thought the author was this guy called Neneus, now we're not sure.

Oh really? Yeah, we're not sure anymore. I learned it was Neneus when I was at university. Me too, well people call him Pseudo-Neneus. Pseudo-Neneus, I know people like that. And it's an attempted history that traces the origins of Britain right back to this hero called Brutus. The Trojan dude. Yeah, the Trojan dude, yes. Yeah. Okay, yeah. All I know about him is that he

left Troy, had a few adventures and then came here and in a classic sort of conqueror style killed some indigenous giants or something and then said this is mine by the way. Yeah, exactly that and yet you see him in the middle ages being called the founder of Britain and there seems to be a kind of oversight of these giants who were originally there. There is a prequel that comes up later about some giant sisters. I think the giants even live near me though, I think they're from Totten-Esland, I live in Exeter, I think they're from Totten-Esland based. So if they were Totten-Esland they're probably quite nice, they're probably quite into building their own guitars. Provincial giants. Yeah, wearing woolens and... Going to a farmer's market on a Sunday.

Exactly, they've been looking after the environment. Cultured giants. Yeah, cultured in general. And Brutus shows up with his Greek ways and stabs them. Exactly, swinging it about. Yeah, I think Totnes is the place where Brutus's right-hand man chucked one of the giants over the edge of the cliff. That's right, yes.

It's not very nice. No. So this document, Historia Britonum, or the History of the Britons. Yes. We It's not very nice. So this document, Historia Britonum or the history of the Britons, we're not sure who wrote it, maybe Neneas, pseudo Neneas. He doesn't call Arthur King Arthur? No, crucially he describes these twelve battles that Arthur has led people in but he's not described as a king, he's described as a dux bellorum, which means a leader of battles. Okay. Yeah, yeah, dux bellorum. Lovely. It's nice, isn't it? That's a really lovely phrase.

So I have to ask the big question, is he real? Well, I mean, the big problem for all of the Arthur truthers is that there is really only, because it is dark ages, scare quotes, there is really only one piece of writing, piece of writing about what's going on in Britain that is roughly contemporaneous with Arthur and it's written by a British monk called Gildas, who again we don't know much about, and for a Briton he's not really, he doesn't really big up his own team very much. The text is called On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, DxCDO at Conquest du Britannia. It basically describes Britain as being kind of a muddled mess at this time.

I see it as a classic communist, sort of broken Britain. Yeah, it is. He thinks that Britain's downfall is due to a series of just not very nice, very ungodly, immoral rulers. He does say that there is a British victory at the Battle of Baden, which sounds exciting and oh, you know, it could match up, but he doesn't connect it with Arthur. He connects it with another victor, another figure called Ambrosius Aurelianus, which is another wonderful title. It means the golden immortal

in Latin. Ambrosius Aurelianus. Who is he? Is he a Roman? He's a Roman, we think. A Romano-Britain. But he's there after the Romans have left? He's hanging about? Yeah, there are still there are still military commanders we think are in Britain after the Romans have left because they've left lots of you know skills and training. Son of a Roman, grandson of a Roman, and we have an Ambrose, yeah. The utility bills are coming to their address and they're settled.

They've got friends and family and hobbies and they've managed to let people know that their name is the Golden Immortal. Yeah. Which is a great- You don't want to move on from a place where people are calling you that, do you? No, you don't.

So we don't know if there was a real King Arthur. Yeah. Not to say that there wasn't. Sure. But you know, I'm not convinced. Maybe King Arthur is just a friend we made along the way. You know, it's just an idea. It brings us together. So the next text we have to talk about would be a Welsh classic. My pronunciation is gonna be dreadful, but Mabonogion?

That's great. Yeah, Mabonogion. And actually that's a collection of texts to Mabonogion. Within this collection of tales, there are some interesting Arthurian examples. The Mabinogion, it doesn't appear, as with my other example, until quite late in manuscript forms. We're talking sort of 14th, 15th century manuscripts, but we think the texts contained within them were actually probably first written down as a collection much earlier in the 11th or 12th century. And here's the kicker, they probably have oral origins, some of them that are even earlier than that.

So written maybe sort of post-Norman conquest, but possibly even older stories. I would say so, yeah. The stories themselves seem to have much earlier roots, a bit like a Godothan really. There's a few of them that mention Arthur, but one of my favourites and one of the earliest is a tale called Kulluukhe Kullwen. You sometimes hear it in English called How Kullukhe Won Olwen. This seems to have really quite early roots. It doesn't bear any resemblance to the other kind of big Geoffrey of Monmouth tradition Arthur texts. And Arthur is most definitely a king in this story. At last! Yes, he's got there. And it's just a fantastic story. So basically Arthur has a cousin called

Culloch or Culloch who's a young man and he's fallen in love potentially through a curse but never mind with a young woman called Olwen and her father is a terrible giant called Isbathardn, chief of all giants. In order to win Olwen's hand, Culloch is given a series of tasks, impossible tasks, 40 of them he has to complete. He can't do this on his own, you know, he's just a weedy young guy. So he goes off to King Arthur's court and enlists the help of Arthur and his kind of almost superhuman knights, his superhuman retinue. All I'm hearing here, Mary, is he invented Taskmaster. That's what I'm hearing,

Mike. 40 tasks, off you go. That's a series of Taskmasters. He's a bunch of guys around a round table who might be out for a challenge. The Mabinogion I'm vaguely familiar with, it's incredibly weird. Yes. It's really complex. It's wonderfully weird. Yeah. But it's brilliant.

It's amazing. It's quite Studio Ghibli. It's quite like talking animals and weird forests. Lots of people turning into boars and people sort of seem to change form quite regularly. It feels quite, I don't know, high- I assume at some point someone's got to kill a boar, right? Normally when you sing someone's got to kill a magical boar. Yes! How did you know that? That's brilliant. I think that's something that just kicked into my memory, it just dragged up from the back. He is King Arthur, it's coming back to him. It's you! Yeah, no, that's the climax point really of the whole. So these 40 tasks are very varied

and they involve some quite scary things from kind of impossible husbandry agricultural tasks to retrieving a magic cauldron and the blood of a black witch who lives at the uplands of hell and the climax is this hunt for this boar called Turchtrueth. And the interesting thing is about half, like a large number of the tasks relate in some way to preparing for this great boar hunt that happens at the kind of climax of the story. And the reason why they need to hunt Turchtrueth is that this giant scary boar has between his ears on his hairy little head. He's got a male grooming set. Yes, he does. You do know this story.

Is this, is that what you were thinking when you were thinking it's quite out there? Maybe, yeah, yeah. So there's this sort of Miyagi style kind of training, secret training going on and then, yeah, he wants to trim his beard and get his dream curls going for wedding day. It's all the bounce and no frizz. That's it. Exactly. Yeah. But this is not the Arthurian map that we know. Okay. So first off there's no Camelot here and it's nowhere near

Caleon which is where it is for much of the middle ages after later writers get involved. And Arthur's called it's called Kelliwig and it's in Cornwall so in quite a different place. Is it the Tantagel thing, is it? Or is that imposed later? I think that's a later development which comes with Geoffrey of Monmouth. There are other candidates put forward all the time for Ketleywig and where it might have been based on the place name and things like that. Oh you can't go anywhere rural in England and parts of Wales without someone claiming this is... Arthurian. Yeah, exactly.

Because otherwise how are you going to shift pencil sharpeners? Exactly! The gift shop needs... It's all about merch. Arthurian tat. Everyone claims it. Yeah. I mean there was an early 20th century scholar who said that there is no name more ubiquitous

in the British landscape other than the devil than Arthur. So yeah, he really is everywhere. He gets absolutely everywhere.. Now what's Excalibur called? Because it's not called Excalibur yet, the sword? No it's not it's called Caledvilch which means hard cleaving so it's it's a serious sword and but there are some recognizable characters here so amongst Arthur's superhero knights there is Kay or Kay when the author is describing all of the superhuman qualities that this massive list of names from Arthur's court has, Kay has lots. He's kind of, I don't really know much about superheroes, but he would be the superhero that has all of the superpowers. There are familiar names, so we have

Bedfyr or Bedwyr, Gwelchmae, which doesn't sound very familiar, but it's the Welsh name for Gawain. And Arthur's wife here is Gwenuwfaire which doesn't sound very familiar but it's the Welsh name for Gawain and Arthur's wife here is Gwynfair which sounds very familiar. That's good, so we're definitely edging towards Gwynfair, we're getting towards Gawain so it's starting to feel Arthurian but it's not quite there yet. And there's lots of weird names in Arthur's call as well. Yeah and I mean according to the tale tale of, how do you pronounce it? Killock? Killock, yeah. According to the tale of Killock and Oran, we've got King Arthur and a host of 260 warriors.

Oh blimey. Quite a lot of people he's gathered around his table. They've got some special talents. Some of them are quite weird special talents, Mary. I mean, we've got Scythe, son of Seer. Scythe, son of Se mean, we've got Sight, son of Seer. Sight, son of Seer, who has amazing eyesight. Which sounds useful, but then you also have Penpingian, who walks on his head to save his feet.

Amazing. Less useful. Can you describe how he does that? Exactly, he's like Pogo. I assume he's just walking around upside down on his hands all the time, but surely that's a superpower. Not a very helpful one. I don't think his nightly peak years are gonna last him long to be honest

he's more the show pony end of things yeah perhaps you don't want to trust him in a fight do you really i mean he's prattin about his handstands showing off to the local peasants we've got ear son of hearer he's got fantastic hearing yes i feel like the guy who stands in his head didn't get the memo. No, maybe they left him behind. They don't all go on the quest, just the useful ones. Someone's got to stay behind and guard the castle. Upside down. Slowly shopping around the moat. Mike, what talent do you think Lip, son of Placid, possesses? Lip? Yeah. Is he a polyglotty? Is he a man of many tongues? That's a very, very good guess. Yeah. No way. Too useful. I mean. Magical kisses? I guess. Can he kiss it all better? That would be, what a wonderful thing. For the ancient knights. Oh that would be so good.

He's a very good medic. Incredible. Like a kind of rogue figure. No,, his skill is, well I'll read you the quote, on days when he was sad, he would let his bottom lip drop down to his navel. And on the other day, it would be a hood over his head. Yeah, so the party trick he does with his bottom lip is it goes down to the navel. But I should clarify, actually, the top lip goes up over the head like a hood How do you see? Wow, I don't see how that's particularly useful. He's used to measure the emotional temperature of the of the squat. Maybe that's it I guess so. Like a morale barometer. Yeah, it's quite useful for leaders. Yeah, how is morale today?

Well lip is currently wearing his lip like a hat. The notorious knights will just say that they're fine, but are you really? Let's have a look at what Lip's doing. And after this charmingly weird Mabinocchion, we get our first English horse, Mary, and it's not entirely English because Geoffrey of Monmouth is a bit Welsh? It's a very, it's a really complicated question. Monmouth, yeah, Monmouthshire is in what is now modern day Wales, but for much of the Middle Ages it was in what we call the-day Wales, but for much of the Middle Ages it was in what we call the Welsh March, so that kind of border between Wales and England.

And we don't really know the extent to which Geoffrey had familial Welsh connections or whether he came from the kind of Anglo-Norman elite who were ruling, who were the leaders in the marches at that time. He's kind of extremely famous in the Arthurian tradition because around 1136, 1137, he produces this book called the Historia Regum Britanniae or the History of the Kings of Britain. You're not, I think you probably have heard of this one. I've heard, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

This is the one that starts with Brutus and ends with the Saxons coming and giving everyone a wallop. Exactly. And you might notice an overlap there with the Historia Britonum and that is a major source for Geoffrey. But he's a lot more elaborate on Arthur's life than what has come before. So much so that people think, did he make all of this up? Is it completely his own invention? Because he claims to be, he says he found a very ancient book of an ancient tongue. In the ancient Welsh, the British language. But then obviously he doesn't name it and we don't have it and you're like, did you? Well, I think people are overly keen to be really, really sceptical about Geoffrey. I

would imagine that if you'd grown up in Monmouthshire, and if he did indeed have Welsh family, he would have been familiar with oral stories that we know were circulating about Arthur. But I think a lot of the detail is his own biographical elaborations, if you like. And it is so, so popular. So there's, I think, something like 215 copies that survive from the Middle Ages. Yeah, that's incredible. And not even just in Latin, which it was written in. That's best, I've got no idea. Is that best? Oh, that's, yeah, that's huge.

That's astonishing. That's like, you know, for most of our text we've got like 20, 25, 30 sometimes. And that's big, like that's big, you know, like Bevis of Hampton, one of the other really popular romances in the Middle Ages, there are far fewer copies than that in English, so it's really... He's the Grisham of his day. Yeah, he's the John Grisham of the 13th century. It's just, it's a huge, it's just like a a huge huge change in terms of the record of the history of Britain It's hugely important inspiring European intellectuals to think about history in a new way So you suddenly get this sort of splitting of history into three categories matter of Rome ancient history the matter of France Charlemagne's Empire and the matter of Britain because in Jeffrey of Monmouth's text King Arthur unifies England, Scotland, Wales and

Ireland and then he's like that's not enough I'm gonna go conquer some stuff and he adds to that Brittany, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway, France and Romania. He's basically a one-man Eurovision. Wow. Yeah. I mean that's quite a slip. The Romania, how's he managed this sort of supply line thing? There's a bit of a gap. There is a gap, isn't there? So this King Arthur is a conqueror and King of half of Europe, as well as King of Britain, a unified Britain, which is an interesting political idea, obviously.

And of course, you've mentioned he's important, but Geoffrey of Monmouth, we would call him a chronicler, we would call him a historian, but he's hugely important for the literature aspects of what becomes Arthuriana. So do you want to talk us through that? Yeah, massively. So because we don't have much of a biography of Arthur before, what Geoffrey adds in terms of details is incredibly important for the romances. And even though Geoffrey is much more interested in what Arthur is doing during wartime than

during peacetime, which is what the romances are interested in, the details added are a great starting point. We find out about Arthur's conception, which is not a very nice story. He's the son of a king called Uther Pendragon. His mother was married to someone else and then Merlin helps Uther to trick her by disguising him as her husband and it's all not very consensual. Yeah. What else is familiar here? He has a wife called Guarnamara, who's essentially again Guinevere. He's betrayed by his nephew Mordred, which becomes a very crucial part of Arthur's story. He has a relative called Morgan Le Fay.

He's not a baddie. No, she's not. Because I think most people will hear the name and go Morgan Le Fay, baddie, sorceress, evil queen witch lady. She's really done dirty by later authors but here she's... Is she Morgan's mum? No that's well so that we'll come to that later but not here no. So Morgan Le Fay I think is Arthur's half sister here and she's a healer and a sorceress essentially and White magic, healing magic. Good magic. Because she's the one behind the green knight, isn't she?

Oh yes, she is mentioned in the green knight story. And by that point, she's not very nice by that point because she wants to frighten Guinevere to death, which is horrible. Yeah, so in this early, in Jeffrey of Monmouth, she is a positive figure she heals Arthur when he's injured later on she will be turned into a villain yes we do get we sort of get Excalibur-ish Caliburnus which makes sense you can see how the Latin could become Excalibur very easily because X means from so Excaliburnus from Caliburn well funnily enough it's supposed to have been forged at Avalon okay which is I find super interesting because I know that at Glastonbury Tor they found traces of early metal working on the Tor. It's real! But it's just I like it when there's funny little circumstances like that that line up. And Merlin is the other important addition here. Is that where he first appears?

There's an earlier figure in the Welsh tradition called Myrdyn and he's a poet and he's a prophet as well but Geoffrey takes him and gives him a much more detailed story he's not limited to the reign of Arthur so he's a sort of royal advisor from Arthur's forebears right through down to Arthur. He advises Uther Pendragon. Yeah he's also supposedly responsible according to Geoffrey for bringing Stonehenge over to Britain. Yes. So he's got some interesting

stories connected with him. Now why do you think Mervyn was renamed to Merlyn by Geoffrey of Monmouth? This is just a possibility, we're not sure this is true, but why might that be the case? Interesting. Mervyn. I don't know what would be the problem with the word Merv. If I could give you a clue. Go and have a clue please. The sound in Welsh is produced with letters that look like a double D. So it looks like Merdin. Oh, so it looks like murder, it looks like sort of devilry business.

Oh, you're thinking murder? No, in French Merd means shit. Of course! Wow! Yeah, that's the running theory anyway. And you know, you want to say the same. It's the same reason as the they can't the Toyota can't sell the MR2. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Shitty. The profit doesn't really. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's a beautiful name in Welsh. But when you translate it to French it's literally a crap name.

So this is like one of the earliest examples of rebranding, is it? Yeah, essentially. So Merlin, or Merlaut in French I suppose, but Merlin in English. The other thing that Geoffrey of Monmouth brings in is something you've already mentioned, the idea of Arthur as the once and future king as well, doesn't he? The idea of his return. I think Geoffrey leaves it open to question and that becomes a lot more prominent later. So a lot of Jeffrey's other kings we're

told they died in this state, they were buried here quite often. With Arthur we're told that he's taken off to Avalon for healing after this terrible final battle at Camlan and then the crown passes to the successor but we're not actually given that information about whether he dies or how he dies and people love to elaborate on that later on. Oh yeah, that's lush that stuff. Owen Glyndor, all that kind of like, come again type stuff. Exactly that.

And that then kickstarts what we might charmingly cheekily call fanfiction. It's not necessarily fanfiction but it's a sudden surge of other writers going, oh I can run with this, I can add to this and it starts straight away doesn't it? I think fan fiction is an excellent way of describing it. I've heard it called that in my lectures particularly as it really snowballs so what Greg's referring to here is the romance tradition that starts in Europe which is very hard to summarise because it just explodes so quickly. Geoffrey's text is translated, so it's originally in Latin, a handy lingua franca for the period, and it's translated very, very quickly into French by a Channel Islander called Wass,

into English, translations of it all across Europe, and into Welsh as well, actually. So yeah, from the 12th century we start to see Arthurian literature being composed. The lion's share of Arthurian romance really most innovative Arthurian romance that we see at the earliest date is in French, which of course is a prestige language in much of Europe. Do you know why they're called romances, Mike? Oh I don't know why they're called romances, no. Because we now use the word romance to mean, you know, love stuff, a bouquet of flowers and all that. But it's a linguistic history, right? It's just the romance language.

Right. Is that it? Yeah. Essentially, yeah. So in French, these texts are called romans, which is still the word for novel today in modern French. And Deutsch as well, yeah. Yeah.

And then in England, when you start seeing these texts called romance, it's clear that they are, it's actually used for any text that's written in French originally, it doesn't even have to have like knights and everything else. Yeah, so we think it's to do with romance like literature originally being written kind of in Latinate. Some of these authors in particular, I'm thinking here of Marie de France, who I'll talk about in a sec, and also Chrétien of Troyes, Chrétien de Troyes. They really are interested in these big questions about how a knight balances his chivalric, his martial obligations with, you know, being courtly and refined and being a lover. He's a lover and a fighter ladies.

And Arthur in these texts becomes, we call him a raffaneant, a do-nothing king. He's a lover and a fighter ladies. And Arthur in these texts becomes a, we call him a raffaneant, a do-nothing king. He's a lot less important than his knights and all of their affairs and adventures and things like that. And Lancelot is actually, he isn't even in the Arthurian tradition prior to romance. Well let's do a mini quiz for you actually Mike. So Chrétien Titoire is probably the most important writer of this period writing at sort of the 1170s 1190s yeah adds quite a lot of iconic elements to the Arthurian canon so which of these five iconic elements was not Chrétien's invention I'm gonna give you five one of them is not from

Chrétien one Camelot right two Lancelot yeah three Lancelot's tragic romance with Guinevere four the, the round table, five, the quest for the holy grail, which was not Chrétien's invention. I'm going to say the quest for the holy grail. It's a good guess, but it's the round table. Is it really? Yeah, the round table. That comes first.

Chrétien didn't come up with that. Chrétien came up with the others. So who invented the round table? The round table is first mentioned, do you remember earlier I mentioned WASS, the Channel Islander, who translates Jeffrey and adapts, it makes it more interesting. Yes, and one of the additional details that he includes is that a circular table is produced that can seat knights all the way around it with no hierarchy, so it's to get rid of squabbling about seniority. In the grail texts, this is developed a bit, so there's always a seat that's left vacant called the siege perilous, or the

dangerous chair, the dangerous seat. Yeah, siège means chair in French. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea being that it's deadly to sit in, the only person who can sit in it has to be the most pure knight going, and that's the only one who can achieve the quest for the grail. Robert Wass, that's the Roman de Brut, so that's the story of Brutus, that's 1155, so that's 15 years before Chrétien, but Chrétien de Troyes describes something that he does invent which is the Holy Grail. Right. Now what do you think of when you think of a Holy Grail? Beyond the Monty Python film. Well okay Now, what do you think of when you think of a Holy Grail? Beyond the Monty Python film. Well, OK, beyond the Monty Python film. What do you think of in terms

of what it looks like, what it is? Well, I'm a follower of Indiana Jones, so it's going to be a basic cup, perhaps wooden, that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. And I think the legend was that if it could be restored to Britain, that that would heal the nation. I think that is also involved in this kind of Joseph of Arimathea. Did he come to Britain? If so, did he bring Jesus as his apprentice? Did he buy a cup from a gift shop in Glastonbury while he was here? Did he take it back? And then is it like nicking a Hoegarden glass from a pub? Was it not actually his glass and he was supposed to return it to the bar but he didn't? He didn't know any Bessé, he's not from this thing in other words, do you know what I mean? Chrétien says that it is a flat serving dish for presenting the Eucharist wafer

and there's moments where they see this vision of it being brought out in a sort of parade and it's actually gained a lot more importance since the romance, it's kind of become this huge object that people are looking for but actually the original grail romance is it's part of a collection of mystical objects really if you like. I need to ask also we've mentioned the round table yeah how many nights are sitting around the round table? I always imagined it was like a baker's dozen. You're thinking 13? I was thinking King Arthur and then a dozen nights. You're bang on for one of the sources, but we also get, I mean, various numbers, right?

Yeah, so it ranges from 12 knights up to a lot more than that, sometimes 150. That's quite simple. In the Welsh tradition, 24, Epedwa Marrog, sometimes 225, sometimes 300. If you wanna know how crazy it gets, Lachemann, who is the English translator of Geoffrey, text in Lachamon's brute he says that a carpenter Builds this fold-out portable table that can be carried around that can seat as many as 1600 nights

1600 nights portable this was saying so the round table conceit 13. Yeah, or 1600 Somewhere between it really depends So each Arthurian text was changing core elements Mary we were seeing here writers coming in adding bits tweaking bits taking a name running With it, you know, we get Morgan Le Fay being transformed from helpful healer into traitorous sister Arthur Becoming the incestuous mother of their child Mordred and then we've also got the kind of the knights who become the prominent the famous knights of the round how many can you name off top of your head oh blimey here we go so uh Lancelot yeah of course Gawain we mentioned, Galahad, Percival, Kay, Bors.

Yeah? Yes. Ooh, I don't know if that's it. That's a lot. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. There's hundreds.

There's so many. There's loads. Other mainstays include Goheris, Agrivene. So Mordred, Segareth. Tristan. Tristan of course, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We also need to mention Marie de France. Yeah so she's a really important figure because first of all there aren't many female Arthurian authors to be honest at this early date that we know of and Marie de France translates this group

of stories that she says are Breton lays which were kind of sung to a harp in Brittany, which is very intriguing because that might suggest a route into the French tradition. But also route in perhaps the British tradition, the Breton Britain, you know, Brittany, that sort of link. Yeah, potentially. And some of these lays are Arthurian in nature. And some of them are quite typical. Some of them are a bit more unusual. There's one called L'Enval about a knight who is overlooked by Arthur and Guinevere and just not treated very well and he ends up being rescued by a fairy lover who he

has a very good time with in a meadow in a tent somewhere and she rides in to rescue him and he leaps on the back of her horse and rides off just as he's about to be given this terrible trial at Arthur's court. Yeah lovely. Great, isn't it? So she's great. I love, I love Mary DeFrance and they're a good length as well. You can just kind of dip in it. She was writing in the late 1100s. Yes.

There's also Robert de Boron who invents another motif. Do you want to guess what Arthurian motif he adds into the canon? Sword in the Stone. Yes. Is it? God, you've been very well at this. That was a guess, but I was trying to think what's missing from the classics. You're doing great here, at this. That was a guess, but I was trying to think what's missing from the classics. You're doing great, Emma.

That's amazing. And what's interesting after that is we get what's called the Vulgate cycle. Yes. A slight pivot in the direction of the themes. Yeah, a little bit. It's also really the first time that we start to see a lot of these disparate stories being brought together into a kind of very epic, coherent whole. But yeah, the Vulgate cycle,

we're not sure exactly who wrote it, but we think it may have been written by someone, possibly a secular author who had spent time in Cistercian circles, and they were all about kind of mystical things, which explains why they were monks. Yes, which explains why the grail is such an important part of that part. When is this? Early 1200s. Okay. So we start to see a slight pivot away from the kind of the adventures of knights and it's becoming a bit a little bit more about like Christian purity and the idea of the ideal knight and that's this is the time of crusades right? So yeah and so it really is answering to that image of the the ideal knight as a Christianized kind of a knight and it also raises the question as to whether there are forms of knighthood that are not so ideal,

that shouldn't be idealized so much. And I think by drawing that connection between the Grail quest and the death of Arthur, the Maw Tattoo, which is kind of the end point in the story in the Volgate collection if you like, it's really reinforcing the potential for the failure to achieve something as being potentially something that could lead to the downfall of somebody great, like Arthur. Have you heard of Le Morte Arthur as a book by Thomas Mallory? Have you read it? I don't, no I haven't read it. I have heard of it. It's sort of a Rapscallian figure, isn't it? Yeah. Sort of, it's a prison book.

You know your stuff, don't you, Mike? I have to confess, I think it's one of those things that I've intended to read for a long time, if never, do you know what I mean? It's on the list behind all the Grishams. I may have even known it at some point, and it's been put on the bookshelf in front of the Grishams.

Yeah. But then you reach for a Grisham. Yeah, you're spot on. Yeah, so okay, you haven't read it, but you know that he's a bit of a character. I mean, Mary, this is the, very much, the Marvel cinematic universe of the 15th century. Here is someone trying to grapple

with an enormous, sprawling collection of stories where people are rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, and he's gone, oh, we need to standardize this. We need to bring this all into one coherent narrative, a beginning, middle, and end, about about King Arthur and he dies at the end. So what is the mess that he tries to cohere? I mean, it's really massive. We think Mallory was using sources written in French and sources written in English, but there is at least one book in the book. It's a book split into

books confusingly, and there is at least one book in there where we don't know what his source was, which is very intriguing. It's an amazing fate of being able to synthesise a huge amount of stories and weave them together into a master narrative. We call it Le Morte d'Artur, which sounds pretty sexy. Yes, no, it wasn't. And it was a major spoiler. Yeah, yeah, actually that's true. Yeah, right, actually. It does massively give the game away. The original title in English was different.

It was the whole book of King Arthur and his noble knights of the Round Table, which I think is more, it leaves you to guess what the ending's gonna be. Yeah, the Mortart, you're right, it's a real. Sure, but it's less easy to put in, it's not such a sort of front of the bookshop type title. So it's written in 1469, 1470,

so we're talking quite late at this point in the Middle Ages, quite a bit later than the other romances we've been talking about. So it's just before the Tudor era, it's right at the end of the Middle Ages. quite a bit later than the other romances we've been talking about. So it's just before the Tudor era, it's right at the end of the Middle Ages. Wars of the Roses, yeah, and it's 1485, it's actually printed and it's printed by this printer called William Caxton and Caxton retitles it Lomote Arthur, presumably because it sounds kind of classy in French, I don't know. I don't think I've heard that name before, is he?

What's he famous for? Yeah, so he's the master printer, we had an episode on him We did an episode on him earlier, you can check out With Robinance He was the first great printer in English The English language and so Lamour D'Artur Is his sort of rebrand Of this great text

Mallory is a politician He's a sort of sheriff He does some bad stuff, he ends up in prison So tell us, who was he? Well, we had three candidates. We weren't sure which Thomas Mallory Knight who was imprisoned it was. As it turns out, there were three candidates, but the one who looks most likely was from Warwickshire. And yeah, he had a very colorful career, shall we say. He was a sheriff. He was a justice of the peace five times. He was an MP. But he was also accused of some pretty

terrible crimes and spent time in prison for them. And these range from cattle rustling and things like that to robbing a local abbey all the way up to attempted murder of the Duke of Buckingham, theft, rape and extortion. So all in all, not known as being a particularly nice, particularly nice guy. No, it's as old as time, right? The guy seeking office, gotta get in office again just in case the law catches up with him. It's the Donald Trump strategy, isn't it? Exactly, yeah. It's effective. And yet he's accused of all these terrible things and actually we think that he may have

written L'amorte d'Arthur, which I don't know if you've ever seen a copy but it is massive. It's one of those books that people say that they've read sometimes when they haven't read all of it because it's so so long and we think that he wrote it while during a period of imprisonment possibly in Newgate prison or possibly Tower of London. Maybe somewhere where he would have had access to manuscripts that contained enough of the his source material that he could use. What's the thing that he didn't where there's no source? It's the Book of Sagareth. So the Mort Datura is a sort of compendium of stories. We break it down into eight tales. So it takes you right from Arthur's conception through his rise to the throne.

You've got the sword in the stone story in there about him pulling the sword from the stone and becoming king. He goes over to Europe and conquers the Roman Empire after a nasty challenge from a Roman emperor. We're introduced to all of his round table nights as in some of the other romances. He's got 150, hasn't he? 150 of them. Yeah, a good round number. Quite a lot. Lancelot is more important than in other English romances in Malory because of his French sources. And this is where you get the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, that great love triangle. Mallory's kind of squeamish about the sex stuff, so they don't have sex with each other. It's probably for the mass market, right? Yeah, well, and possibly a slightly more prudish audience, I don't know, until quite late in the

text. And then after everything goes wrong for Arthur and he's betrayed by Mordred and the knights fall into kind of infighting and factions, partly because of what happens with Lancelot and Guinevere. It all goes very wrong. Arthur is mortally wounded and is taken off to Avalon. This is one of those texts where we are told some people think he doesn't live anymore and this is where we first hear Arthur called the once and future king. Yeah. And then there's a funny postscript with Lancelot and Guinevere where they become a monk and a nun respectively. Which is greatly elaborated upon by Mallory. And it's worth just saying also that Galahad sits on the siege perilous, the sort of scary chair.

Yes he's the dude isn't he? The grail quest is very much in there. And he does it, he does a grail. He's like, bosh! Nailed it. Does a grail, gets's like, bosh! Nailed it. Does a grail, gets made a king, dies. Yeah. Yes. So this is the kind of classic text that students read, well, try and read, and then very quickly

give up. So it's a romance, but it's not that romantic as everyone dies at the end. Yeah. I'm Helena Bonham Carter, and for BBC Radio 4, I'm back with a brand new series of History's Secret Heroes. And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent, she will work undercover, and if she's caught, she's going to be shot. Join me for more stories of unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception and courage from World War II.

Subscribe to History's Secret Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. So we've discussed literature. We should talk quickly about Arthurian artefacts or artherfacts, if you will, which is to say that in the Middle Ages people started finding proof. Yeah. question mark. I think we think of Arthurian tourism as a kind of post-Victorian thing, but absolutely not. You know, like people were going to pilgrimage sites and churches and things like that that claimed to have objects connected with Arthur and all of the people who populated his world.

Some of these were kind of clearly propaganda objects as well, right? So when Edward I defeats Llewelyn ap Griff Griffith he seizes a crown from him that is supposed to have been Arthur's crown but then gets stored quite safely in Westminster for a while. This is Arthur's sword. Yeah that's Richard the Lionheart. Richard the Lionheart gives Arthur's sword. Yes he does, he gives it to I think King Tancred I think he gives it to the King of Sicily. We've got King John, he's got Sir Tristan's sword. Yep. Some say it's still used in royal coronations.

So they say. It's not, it's not. No. Dover had Gawain's head. Yes, and we know this based on people who visited and tell us that they were shown Arthur and Gwenevys chamber, Gawain's skull, and his bones, because he dies in Dover,

according to Geoffrey. Winchester built a round table. Yes. Edward the third built it? I think Edward the first, we think possibly to do with a grand tournament and it's still hanging there you can go and see it. Clearly not you know authentic in any way. Henry the eighth had it repainted as well. Beautiful. So it's been continually an object of royal propaganda. And my favorite one of all, Cambridge University in the 1400s claims that King Arthur had given them a tax exemption and it was hand delivered by Sir Gawain himself. But the real Arthur aficionados, you know the medieval world were big on it but the

Victorians they loved a bit of Arthurian honour. Yeah, this is kind of a period that we call the Arthurian revival, when interest in Arthur just explodes again, and there's various reasons for this. Arthur is, you know, a powerful Christian imperial symbol. You can see how he might be appealing to certain Victorians. He's a conqueror, he unifies Britain, helpful. Yeah, all of that.

He's a morally upright figure at a time when people are being more thoughtful about morals, and particularly morals among the upper classes as well. He's got big muscles but he will hold the door open for the lady, right? Some of the more dodgy bits of the medieval Arthur, like things like the incest story where Arthur kills a load of babies because he doesn't want Mordred to come and overthrow him, his incest child. The Victorians don't like that very much. It's very King Herod. Yeah, it's very King Herod. It's covered, right? Don't do that, please. Malory is actually republished. It's censored. Like some of the nastier bits are tweaked for

Victorian tastes. And then Tennyson. So Tennyson actually kind of rediscovers a lot of the Arthurian stories, partly through Malory, but also partly through the Welsh tales that by that point have been translated by Lady Charlotte Guest and by other people that he knew and he's really well known for his rewrites of the Arthurian story. You've got his poem The Lady of Shalott which is very very famous and also his grand Arthuriad which is called The Idols of the King. We also get of course Victorian print books have beautiful illustrations, that's another big appeal you see. These are gorgeous art and in a previous episode we've talked about the Arts and Craft movement and they were obsessed with Arthur as well. So paintings and all sorts of things. So we've got

kind of really rich sort of Arthurian poetry and so on but there's also women involved here too. We've got more important figures here. Yeah and actually I would suggest that we can partly thank women for the Arthurian revival. Only partly though. You know like they were interested in the Arthurian stories even when people were passing them off as kind of frivolous and not valuable. I mentioned already Lady Charlotte Guest, you have poets like Louisa Stewart Costello, whose funeral boat probably influenced Tennyson with his Lady of Shalott, which is interesting.

One of my favorites is Elizabeth Stewart Phelps. So she's actually writing in America. She's American, but she's writing in the same sort of time period as Tennyson. And she's an early feminist. So she paints these amazing reimagined stories featuring Arthurian characters but very much set in kind of contemporary lower and middle class America. So you'll get a vision of kind of Guinevere with a toothache sat on her little cricket stool by the fire lusting over their lodger. That sounds amazing. And like opium fever dreams and everything like it really is.

I've never heard of that. Yeah, a lot of people haven't but actually some of the most important innovators I think in Arthurian literature at this time were not Tennyson and that lot it was actually some of the fan fiction unleashed yeah yeah so go away now on the porch yeah with a shotgun yeah and then also in the art world as well so and there's a photographer called Julia Margaret Cameron. And she's a very famous photographer, really important. Very well known. Yeah. And often we'll see lots of exhibitions about her these days. You know, she's sort of back in vogue. Yeah. And her Arthurian portrait series that she is asked to do for Tennyson for

an 1874 edition of his idols is very, very famous. It contains these kind of photo portraits of people from the Arthurian world. These are people who also were using Arthuriana to justify the British Empire. Yeah. Julia Cameron was born in Calcutta and she owned coffee plantations in Sri Lanka and her and Tennyson were both very, very pro-empire. And they saw the Arthur story as a story about a king who's a civilizing force. I mean, Tennyson's poems describe, yeah, it really is. I mean, Tennyson describes Arthur taming people like wild beasts. It's all very uncomfortable. There's a famous painting actually by George Frederick Wyatt of Sir Galahad that is hung, not just in Eton, the

original, but all over schools and nurseries across the British Empire as a kind of propaganda tool really. This is the platonic idea of a man. Ideal civilised masculinity. Do a quest, grab a treasure from somewhere. Stick a flag in it. Home for neighbours. I think it might be your moustache Mike, but there feels like a slight 19th century leadership quality to you. I feel it might be your moustache, Mike, but there feels like a slight 19th century leadership quality to you. I feel like I want to follow you into battle. But you won't be invading Britain any time soon, I'm assuming. I'll try not to. I'm fighting the urge every day of learning.

There are lots of landmarks. I know we've talked about some already. Just very quickly, what are sort of the real classic landmarks? Tintagel, Mike's mentioned. Tintagel is still a massive tourist hotspot, one of English heritage's most successful, obviously Glastonbury, people still flock to Glastonbury. And the grave of Arthur and Guinevere was found. Was found by some Glastonbury monks in 1191. When they needed some funding.

Yeah, and it's been visited ever since. I like how it's genuine to get a bit of brisk tourist stories. It was a very useful discovery. When I upgrade to annual membership, all that kind of stuff. Potentially, they'd had a disastrous fire. They'd had a fire and they needed to rebuild and suddenly out of nowhere, King Arthur! What are the chances? Six years later, fancy that.

There's all sorts of stories even today about Arthur sleeping beneath a hill or in a cave somewhere ready to come back. That's classic though isn't it? Yeah. Everyone's got one of those. Everywhere. The Poles have got one of those. Well Mount Etna in the Middle Ages. Is there? Yeah it's theorised as this is where Avalon was in a medieval text. The Poles have got them, the sleeping knights of Givont I think it's called. Oh really? Your Polish heritage is coming out there.

I'm aware of this, yeah it's one of those like the knights or a king who'll rise again type thing. That's it, the sleeping. Yeah they're a king who'll rise again type things. That's it, they're sleeping. They're a king. Sleeping king, yeah. You've got Snowdon, Alderley Edge in Cheshire. Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, of course. Arthur's Seat, Arthur's Oven in Scotland as well. There's all sorts of landmarks with Arthurian names.

Mike, do you know which British city has Arthur's seal, Arthur's coat of arms on their modern civic seal? I want to say Winchester. It's a good guess. They've got the round table, right? Yeah, exactly. I would guess Bath because, you know, we talked about the Battle of Bath, pardon. It's none of those.

No. No, it's... It's Hull. Is it really? Yeah. Viking Hull. Yeah. Hull up in the North East.

Why Hull? It's a very long story that I don't have much time to get into today but basically... Can you do it quickly? I can do it really quickly. This particular coat of arms with the three crowns on blue was used by other figures as well. Hull was the King's town founded in 1299. Yes, Kingston upon Hull. Kingston upon Hull. I don't think that the arms date to that early but they were used later on and continue to be used and they happen to be Arthur's coat of arms, you see most commonly as well. Hull! Hull is the great King Arthur seat. You wouldn't have guessed it. Maybe that's where the round table is. Could be. The Nuance Window! So it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Mike and I sit quietly at the roundtable for two minutes with our many, many, many other nights. And we give Dr Mary two minutes

to tell us something we need to know. So my stopwatch is ready without much further ado. The nuance window please. Okay, so we haven't spoken much today about the period between the 16th and 19th centuries. And that's because a lot of people think of this as an Arthurian nadir. No one is interested in Arthur, no one is writing about Arthur and actually this is the time when you see some of the weirdest and funniest texts being written about Arthur. I'm gonna give two examples today but there are tons of others, two of my favourites. The first is a little pamphlet published by a famous balladeer called Martin Parker, a famous

history of King Arthur, 1660, so just on the cusp of monarchic restoration. And it seems fairly normal until you delve into his massive list of Arthur's knights, which alongside Garwain Lancelot, includes names like Sir Doggery, Sir Bord, Sir Frisky and Sir Bigot. And I love this because people talk about Parker and this particular text as examples of royalist propaganda and it just goes to show how even the more sober Arthurian genres at this time are becoming playful. There's some tongue-in-cheek stuff going on here, it's not attempting to be history anymore and because of that things get a lot more diverse and interesting. Because we mentioned Hal earlier, did you know that there is a Merlinic prophecy, a prophecy supposedly attributed to Merlin about

Kingston upon Hull, and it's invasion by parliamentary forces? Lots of people don't, and I don't know why you would. But I find it really funny that Merlin, who is a royal advisor, is co-opted as a prognosticator, as a prophet for parliamentarianism, you know, around the Civil War period. I just find that completely wonderful. And a great testament to how even in this Nadiya, things can continue to be reinvented. Amazing. Thank you so much. There you go. To King Arthur. He's the once and future king, because actually he keeps coming back. Yeah, but with a new Yeah, whatever's needed at the time, right? Yeah. So there we go. How do you feel about King Arthur now Mike? I thoroughly enjoy I love that. It's been an absolute feast. You knew way more than you let on you said early on that

You had like rough outlines. I wasn't sure. Yeah, I'd loved it as a kid I think in particular. Hmm, and there's so many brilliant movies and things They really are there are so many movies of Excalibur in particular. I'm gonna have to go back and watch that. Excalibur is a great one. First night, not so good. Yeah. We seem to share the knowledge between us, which I love. Everyone has something a bit different. Exactly. So what do you know now? Well it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Mike to see how much he has learned.

Are you feeling confident? I don't think I am feeling confident. Yeah, there's been a lot of detail, names that I probably haven't grasped, but let's see. I feel like you contributed very well to the overall conversation, so I'm not going to hold it against you if this is where you fall down. Alright, so ten questions. Here we go, question one. Which English chronicler wrote a history of the kings of Britain

inspiring others to create Arthurian romance literature? Your friend of mine, Geoffrey of Monmouth. It was. Question two. The round table, seated as few as 12 knights or as many as how many? 1600. It was way too many knights. Question three.

In the story of Colick and Eilewyn, what weird talent did Lip, son of Placid, possess? Oh, when he was blue, when he was feeling low, his lip could go down to his navel, or he could also put it over his head, like a backwards hood. What a skill. Okay, question four. Why might Jeffrey of Monmouth

have changed Merlin's name from Mervyn? So it didn't sound like, oh, the word, four terds. To the French audience. Beautifully done. Question five, how did Morgan Le Fay's character arc change over the medieval period? She was originally a healer and a sort of magic, positive creature, and then became villainous.

Yeah, treacherous half-sister, an incestuous mother of Mordred, yeah. Question six, a name one Arthurian artifact that allegedly medieval kings claimed to own. There's for example Richard Braveheart claiming to have the Excalibur itself giving it to the Richard the Lionheart the Lionheart yeah yeah giving it to the king of Sicily or some Duke of Sicily. Yeah yeah Tancred yeah well remembered very good. You could also have the sword of St. Tristan, Arthur's crown as well,

and Gawain's head was in Dover for some reason. Question seven, who wrote the Mort d'Arthur while in prison? Thomas Mallory. He was, he was the Geoffrey Archer of his age. Yeah. Question eight, according to Chrétien de Troyes, what was the Holy Grail? Oh, it was a serving platter.

It was. Another cup after all. Yeah, it was a serving platter for the Eucharist. Question nine. Juliet Margaret Cameron's photographs illustrated the ideals of the king written by which famous poet laureate? Tennyson. This for a perfect ten, Mike.

Which British city has King Arthur's supposed coat of arms in its crest? Hull. Ten out of ten. Mike Wozniak. That's amazing. You are King Arthur after all. You're back. Wow, that must be true. You're great at this. Pluck a sword out of 10! Mike Wozniak! You are King Arthur after all, you're back! You're great at this!

Pluck a sword out of your stone! Trade my rightly kingdom! I think I would try to be your sort of benevolent dictator. I think it's worth giving that a go. Sure. Even for a couple of years. And how big is your roundtable gonna be? Oh, I think... Oh golly, this is like wedding invites because there'd be so many people that would be offended

if I didn't... You've got to think about colleagues, you've got to be old friends from school, you're not being contextualised... I'm gonna say 240 because then people can never kind of like bring a friend, that kind of stuff. Okay, plus ones. Yeah, plus ones. I'll say 240. You're both invited, obviously. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, thank you. There you go. All right. Well, thank you so much. Listener, if you crave more Wozniak

in your life, of course you do. Check out our episodes on Stone Age Chattelhoyuk. Do you remember that? Yeah. Or of course Dickens at Christmas, a very festive episode. And for more lovely legends, we've got an episode on Atlantis, which was not real, but very interesting. And remember, if you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a review, share the show with friends, subscribe to your dead to me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode, but just want to say a huge Thank you to our guests in history corner. We had the brilliant. Dr. Mary Bateman from the University of Bristol. Thank you, Mary Thank you so much. This has been great

Lovely any comedy corner. We had the marvelous King himself Mike was in the act once in future Arthur Thank you Mike. It's a lovely love loved it. Thank you Mike, it's lovely. I've loved it, thank you so much. Fabulous. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we ride off on another historical quest, but for now I'm off to go and trim my beard. First I just need to find a wild boar. Bye! This episode of Your Dead to Me was researched by John Norman Mason and Hannah Cusworth. It was written by John Norman Mason, Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Emma Noghose and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Ben Hollands. It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Emma Nagoose and our executive editor was James Cooke. Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

Strong message here from BBC Radio 4. I'm Armando Iannucci. And I'm Helen Lewis. A comedy writer and a journalist teaming up like a pair of unkempt and unlikely superheroes. Our mission is to decipher political language. Stress testing to destruction those used and abused buzzwords and phrases. Finding out what they really mean. And looking at whether they're meant to deceive us. Or to distract us. Or to disturb us. to destruction those used and abused buzzwords and phrases. Finding out what they really mean. And looking at whether they're meant to deceive us.

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Listen now on BBC Sounds. from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds. I'm Helena Bonham-Carter, and for BBC Radio 4, I'm back with a brand-new series of history's secret heroes. And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent, she will work undercover, and if she's caught, she's going to be shot.