Mike Ashley - A Brief History of King Arthur

MIKE ASHLEY is an author and editor of over ninety books, including many Mammoth titles. He worked for over thirty years in local government but is now a full-time writer and researcher specializing in ancient history, historical fiction and fantasy, crime and science fiction. He lives in Kent with his wife and over 30,000 books.

Other titles in this series

A Brief History of the Boxer Rebellion
Diana Preston

A Brief History of British Kings & Queens
Mike Ashley

A Brief History of the Celts
Peter Berresford Ellis

A Brief History of the Circumnavigators
Derek Wilson

A Brief History of Christianity
Bamber Gascoigne

A Brief History of the Druids
Peter Berresford Ellis

A Brief History of the Dynasties of China
Bamber Gascoigne

A Brief History of Fighting Ships
David Davies

A Brief History of the Great Moghuls
Bamber Gascoigne

A Brief History of the Hundred Years War
Desmond Seward

A Brief History of Napoleon in Russia
Alan Palmer

A Brief History of the Royal Flying Corps in WWI
Ralph Barker

A Brief History of Science
Thomas Crump

A Brief History of the Tudor Age
Jasper Ridley

A BRIEF HISTORY OF

MIKE ASHLEY

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd

as The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, 2005

Copyright Mike Ashley 2005, 2010

The right of Mike Ashley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

Publication Data is available from the British Library.

UK ISBN 978-1-84901-302-4

eISBN 978-1-47210-765-7

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First published in the United States in 2010 by Running Press Book Publishers All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Library of Congress Catalog Control Number: 2009935105

US ISBN 978-0-7624-3897-6

Running Press Book Publishers

2300 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

Visit us on the web!

www.runningpress.com

Printed and bound in the EU

Tables

Maps

So much has been written about Arthur and his world that it is easy to become influenced by the thoughts and findings of others, no matter how much you try to remain independent. For that very reason I have consulted few people during the course of this book. I have made full use of the scholarship available in the books and websites listed in the Bibliography at the end of this book and make specific acknowledgement here to the excellent work by Leslie Alcock, John Morris, Frank Reno and Richard Barber, as well as the contributors to Robert Vermaats brilliant Vortigern Studies website.

However every author needs a lifeline and I must give special thanks to Peter Berresford Ellis. He read through the original manuscript and offered helpful comments and observations, and also responded to my frequent pleas for help on the Celtic languages and translations. In addition my thanks to Larry Mendelsburg who gave freely of his knowledge of Arthurian literature. I am exceedingly grateful to them both.

I must also thank Gary Kronk who kindly made available to me cometary data updated from his book Cometography (Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Antony Wilson of York Coins for confirmation of data on Danish minters.

And, of course, my thanks and gratitude to my wife Sue who puts up with my hours of isolation as I delve amongst all those dead people, as she thinks of them, and then welcomes me back to the land of the living. To her I dedicate this book, with all my love and affection.

An earlier version of this book was published as the first half of The Mammoth Book of King Arthur in 2005. I have taken the opportunity to update the text and expand certain features as well as amplify some of my original thoughts in order to provide a more complete study and analysis of the sources relating to the original Arthur. This volume concentrates on the origins of the Arthurian story and not on the later medieval legends from Chrtien to Malory.

This book is a quest back into history to find out what we can about King Arthur. It will test the evidence and question whether there ever was a real Arthur and, if there was, whether there is enough evidence to identify him.

There have been numerous books about Arthur and you may ask why we need another. However, most authors who claim to have identified Arthur focus on their specific theory and ignore the rest. Here, though, I want to keep an open mind and present all of the evidence to see what sense, if any, can be made of it. Ill even present a few theories of my own, and provide maps, family trees and a chronology. That way not only can you see how I arrive at my conclusions but it will allow you to draw your own.

The book looks at the world in which Arthur lived (roughly between 400 and 600AD), and explores what evidence has survived to prove or disprove his existence. It also looks at the many theories that have been put forward to identify Arthur and sets them against the historical background in the hope that the real Arthur will stand out. You might think it ought to be straightforward. If Arthur existed, if he was as famous as hes supposed to have been, whether under that name or another, then hell appear in the historical record, just like Alfred the Great or Canute or Macbeth, other great kings from a thousand years ago whose existence is easily provable and not in doubt and whose exploits have become as much a part of legend as Arthurs. But its far from straightforward and theres a lot of work needed to peel back the layers and reveal Arthur in all his glory.

The original Arthur dates back to those Dark Ages in the fifth and sixth centuries when the people of Britain were fighting for their lives against invaders, famine, plague and civil war. No one had much time to keep written records, and any that may have been kept have not survived the centuries. The single sobering fact is that there is not one single piece of genuine historical evidence to support the existence of someone called King Arthur.

Ironically, it is this lack of evidence that makes the search for the real Arthur so compelling, because there is a fair amount of circumstantial evidence to show that someone who was a great leader must have existed. That someone was the man who defeated the Saxons at the battle of Badon so decisively that the Saxon invasion was held at bay for at least a generation. Whoever did that and for simplicitys sake I shall call him Arthur of Badon had to exist because the one victory at Badon is that certain historical fact.