The Real King Arthur
24 December 2000

Once upon a time there lived the greatest hero we've ever known. He was brought up by the wise wizard Merlin. He became King of the Britons when he pulled the sword from the stone. He married the beautiful Guinevere. He rode out of Camelot protected from harm by his magic sword Excalibur. He sat in council with the chivalrous Knights of the Round Table and sent them to find the Holy Grail.

But as all heroes will be he was betrayed, first by the brave Lancelot, who fell in love with Guinevere, and then by his sister, who persuaded him to fight without Excalibur. Mortally wounded in battle with his treacherous son, his body was carried to the Isle of Avalon, from where it is said, in our hour of greatest need, one day he will rise again ...

This king is known as Arthur – and his story is known to us all. Or is it? As Time Team discovered in this programme, most of what we think we 'know' about Arthur is myth and legend, the creation of imaginative writers and artful propagandists.

Tintagel: at the centre of the myth
At the centre of much of that myth lies Tintagel, a headland settlement with a castle on Cornwall's windswept northern coast. Yet until Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote his epic poem 'The Idylls of the King' about King Arthur in the 1880s, there was nothing to connect King Arthur with Tintagel at all. Then Tennyson created his myth of Arthur's conception in the castle and subsequent birth on the beach below, where Tennyson described him as being found by Merlin, who pronounced him a king.

King Arthur expert Geoff Doel told Time Team: 'There was no surviving folklore about Arthur at Tintagel until Tennyson wrote about it and Tennyson put Arthurian tourist sites on the map. It was the age of the railway. People flocked to see Tintagel. Arthur as a tourist attraction was created by Tennyson.'

The roots of the Arthur legend
The only historical references to a King Arthur place him in the 5th or 6th century AD. But Tennyson reinvented Arthur as a medieval king, drawing inspiration from medieval nobleman Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, written three and a half centuries earlier. One of Caxton's first publications after the invention of the printing press, Malory's tale enjoyed huge popularity, translating the Arthurian legend into English for the first time.

For the principal Arthurian myths did not originate in English writings. Rather they were laid out by French authors living in Brittany about 300 years before Malory's epic tale was published. They probably based their tales on stories brought out of Britain by Crusaders in the 11th century, but they undoubtedly embroidered these stories themselves. Described by Tony Robinson as 'proto- Mills and Boon' writers, or early romantic novelists, these authors gave us most of the myth that was later picked up by Malory and Tennyson and which we know so well today.

Arthur, the 'King of the Britons' as we know him best, was in fact a French invention, as are so many of the details of the legend. Lancelot, his affair with Guinevere, Excalibur, Camelot, the Round Table, Sir Perceval and much more all come from these French writers.

The real King Arthur
For the 'real' King Arthur, we have to go back further – to the 5th or 6th century AD.

Around the time that the French authors were producing their version of the Arthurian legends, across the Channel in England a Welsh historian called Geoffrey of Monmouth was writing down a British version. And his book, The History of the Kings of Britain, while packed with his own embroidered versions of events, deals with a real figure. In Geoffrey's account, Arthur appears at the culmination of a war-torn period in Welsh history, emerging as the head of a large kingdom that has been carved out of military victories against the invading Saxons. In this account, Arthur goes on to invade France, defeats the Roman armies and almost conquers the remnants of the Roman empire.

The first archaeological hoax
It was in this context that Arthur was used as a powerful propaganda tool by the 12th-century Norman rulers of Britain. If they could claim Arthur as part of their history, rather than as someone from outside it – whose image could be called upon in opposition to them – this could be used to reinforce their claim to power. One of the results was what may be the first archaeological hoax in British history.

In 1191, on the urging of the king, Henry II, local monks at Glastonbury began an excavation in the abbey cemetery. Remarkably – miraculously, we might say – they discovered what they claimed were the bones of Arthur and his queen Guinevere. Of course there is no way that at that time, six centuries or more after his death, any bodies could have been identified with certainty. A lead cross supposedly found with the bodies, bearing the inscription 'Here lies Arthur in the isle of Avalon', is clearly a forgery.

Royal propaganda
The real explanation for the 'discovery' of the bodies almost certainly lies in the fact that it came at a time when Henry II was trying to legitimise his reign. How better to do this than to link himself in some way with Arthur – and to show also that the ancient king was not lying somewhere waiting to rise again to defend the Britons, but that he was actually buried at Glastonbury, in Henry's territory. In short, both the 'grave' and the Arthurian legend in general were being deployed as very effective royal propaganda.

Henry's successors were happy to employ the same trick. One of them even claimed to have discovered the original Round Table, now hanging in the Great Hall at Winchester. In fact, dendrochronology dating has placed it at 1275, in Edward I's reign. After Edward I held occasional meetings around it with his senior advisers and knights, subsequent monarchs were to follow his example. Edward III used it to show how he was the 'peak of chivalry' – in line with the myth of Arthur as noble medieval knight. And Henry VIII even had it repainted and a Tudor Rose inserted in the middle to establish his dynasty's claim to being the heirs of Arthur.

In fact, Geoffrey of Monmouth's account intertwines Geoffrey's own inventiveness as a story teller so cleverly – and inextricably – with historical fact that it is hard to distinguish between the two in his history of Arthur. The few scraps of historical evidence that predate him – and so are closer to the historical figure – are limited in the information they provide and wide open to interpretation as to exactly where and when he lived.

King Arfur Woz 'Ere
The summer tourist season got a boost at Tintagel in August 1998, when national newspapers picked up on recent finds by a team from Glasgow University who were excavating at Tintagel. Their excavations suggested that underneath the 13th-century castle was a 5th-6th century one – and that it had been large enough to be a royal castle. Previous excavations of earlier structures in the 1930s had identified them as monastic buildings, but the new excavations found evidence of something much bigger.

The excavations also uncovered an inscribed stone, which was marked with the name 'Artognov'. This discovery resulted in a flurry of press reports that the historical Arthur had finally been linked by the archaeological evidence to Tintagel. 'King Arthur Woz 'Ere' as The Mirror's headline put it.

In fact, as Professor Chris Morris points out in the programme, the fact that the first three letters of the name Artognov are the same as in Arthur does not mean that it is the same name, any more than Edward and Edwin would be the same. And even if it was accepted that the inscription did refer to an Arthur, there is no evidence as to which Arthur it might be. The quest for King Arthur is likely to continue for some time yet.

Find out more

Further reading

Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (Modern Library reissue edition, 1994) £9.99
The classic telling of the stories of King Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Queen Guinevere, and Tristan and Isolde.

Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson, edited by J M Gray (Penguin Books, 1983) £9.99
The Victorian classic that revived the Arthurian myth and unleashed a tourist boom on Tintagel.

Exploring the World of King Arthur by Christopher Snyder (Thames and Hudson, 2000) £17.95
A survey of, and companion to, all things connected with the Arthurian legend. The author has examined archaeological evidence and medieval texts, and provides quotes from contemporary sources, a timeline, numerous sidebars and special features on key figures and events.

The Discovery of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe (Henry Holt, 1987) £10.95
Examines the evidence concerning the actual life of King Arthur and traces the development of the myth of King Arthur from the 12th to the 20th century. Claims to identify the historical Arthur as the 5th-century British king Riothamus.

Exploring King Arthur's Britain by Denise Stobie (Collins and Brown, 1999)
Journey through the myths of King Arthur and explore the beautiful countryside with which he is linked using the map references and directions provided. Over 100 colour photos illustrate the locations, as they are today, of the places associated with him, from Tintagel to Glastonbury.

The Quest for King Arthur by David Day (Michael O'Mara, 1999) £9.99
Who was Arthur really? A fifth-century warlord turned king? A medieval hero? Or a symbol in the minds and hearts of desperate men? This text traces Arthur's evolution from the earliest records of the historical Artorius through the countless incarnations, to the idealised figure of the 1990s.

Worlds of Arthur by Geoff Doel, Fran Doel and Terry Lloyd (Tempus, 1999), £9.99

Websites

This website contains links to other websites which are not under the control of and are not maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

Britannia: King Arthur
www.britannia.com/history/h12.html
One of the best, and certainly most comprehensive, sites on Arthur is the American internet resource, Britannia. This covers just about everything the ordinary web surfer might want about Arthur, with histories, timelines, maps, biographies, genealogies, original sources and texts, a reading list, other resources and selected links all presented in an accessible and easily used format. There are also essays by – and a discussion with – the Arthur expert Geoffrey Ashe and even an illustrated 'Magical History Tour' of Britain. Britannia's links to other websites can be accessed directly here.

Arthurian Resources on the Internet
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jjd23/arthur
A useful listing of various Arthur-related resources put together by John J Doherty. It includes a wide range of links to Arthurian texts, critical scholarly sites, general sites, bibliographic lists and other Arthurian material.

The Camelot Project
www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cphome.stm
The Camelot Project is designed to make available in electronic format a database of Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies and basic information. The project, begun in 1995, is sponsored by the University of Rochester and offers a useful starting point for anyone seeking information about Arthur on the internet.

Arthur: A Man for the Ages
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/4186/Arthur/
htmlpages/kingarthur.html
David White's heavily cross-referenced site on Arthurian history and legends. Includes a lively FAQ (frequently asked questions) section, including 'Was the sword really in the stone?', 'Who was the Lady of the Lake?' and 'Was Galahad really so boring?'

Carleon
www.caerleon.net
Site covering all aspects of the village of Carleon, with a section on King Arthur and a page dealing with the summer 2000 excavations on Lodge Hill – with updates promised as more information from the dig becomes available.

Other resources
Bronze Age Foundry
Dave Chapman, c/o 19 Holmwood Gardens, Finchley, London N3 3NS
Website: www.bronzeagefoundry.com
Dave Chapman, who cast the sword featured in the Real King Arthur programme, runs the Bronze Age Foundry project. This is an attempt to recreate as nearly as possible the metallurgical technology of the Bronze Age. But Dave Chapman says it is not only an archaeological experiment – it is also a 'means of connecting with the skills and experience of our ancestors, both technical and magical'.

The design of the furnace and all the techniques he employs are derived from archaeological evidence supplemented by reference to techniques used by various so-called 'primitive' cultures around the world. The Bronze Age Foundry website contains further information together with details of bronze cast objects for sale.

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