Customer Reviews

The Discovery of King Arthur

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I've read this book 5 times now, and it still impresses and amazes me. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize its brilliance and importance until the second time I read it. When this book was first published in the mid 80s, I was already a fan of Ashe, having read other books by him about reconstructing a historical Arthur figure and culture. The first time I read it, I thought that it was weak and conflicted with theories put forth by him in his previous books -- theories which I felt were fine and did not need to be improved on. A couple of years ago, someone convinced me to read it a second time, and it absolutely blew my mind! So I recomend that anyone who is not impressed with it give it another chance. Yes, it shifts Arthur chronologically back a generation or so, but many Arthurian events are being shifted back several years in light of the most up-to-date scholoarship. What Ashe does is he lines up the legend of Arthur, as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, side by side with the history of the fifth century British king, Riothamus, and points out not just a few, but a whole slew of parallels. There are many theories out there trying to reconstruct a historical King Arthur (e.g. see my review of _King Arthur: The True Story_ by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman), many of which try to identify Arthur with someone on record under a different name; most such theories are weak at best and often quite preposterous, being based on the vaguest scraps of evidence and the most tenuous conicidences. Ashe's theory, on the other hand, is a startlingly strong case made up of a preponderance of circumstantial evidence; one may point to any one thing and say that it is only a coincidence, but when you get layer upon layer of these and couple it with archaeological evidence, one can no longer dismiss the similarities between Riothamus and Arthur as mere coincidence. Take it from a guy who has read a lot of books and articles on this subject: this is not just another among the myriad of historical Arthur theories; this deserves to be far and away the preeminent reconstruction of a historical Arthur. Ashe is a genius!

I've skimmed this book several times (for the pictures) before I gave it a real chance when college professors pointed out the thesis of Ashe's work: there are remarkable parallels between the "legendary" King Arthur of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Riothamus, an actual 5th century British King.

Ashe brilliantly leads up to his thesis by presenting the facts, the legends, and previous attempts to discovery the "real" Arthur ("The Old Welsh Trail"). By doing so, Ashe gives the readers the proper context to fit his thesis into.

There are excellent pictures of late Roman/early Saxon Britain artifacts and most interesting of all: an artist's conception of an "Arthurian Knight".

Ashe's book is far more legitimate than King Arthur: The True Story, written by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman. Although well-written, Phillips and Keatman's book tries to link a petty Welsh King of the early 6th century (Owain Ddantgwyn of the Annales Cambriae) with Nennius's King Arthur merely because "he was in the right place at the right time", his nephew Maglocunus could have been Mordred, and because he is mentioned as the "Bear", which means Arthur or something.

This is no criticism of Ashe's believable and accurate work but I must say that I can't believe that Riothamus is the ONLY Arthur. No one can deny that Geoffrey of Monmouth based a good of Arthur's continental campaigns on Riothamus but what about Nennius and the other Welsh Dark Age manuscripts? What about Ambrosius Aurelianus's successor, the Romano-British Warlord/King who slaughtered the Saxons at Mount Badon, a battle that Gildas reported? Riothamus fought in the 460s and 470s, a period atleast 20 years before the battle at Mount Badon. I think there were two special men, the warlord of Badon, and Riothamus, who captured the imagination of the Welsh, and Geoffrey of Monmouth incorporated the two into one man.

As a King Arthur enthusiast, I read this book both with awe, and admiration for the author, Geoffrey Ashe. His insight and passion, and vast historical knowledge, into finding out the facts behind the legend of King Arthur make "The Discovery of King Arthur" a powerful read indeed. Ashe unravels the tangled myths to reveal the facts behind the legend, and pinpoints Arthur to one individual who, more than any other man, fits the description of "Arthur". Ashe makes a very provocative, and eloquent, case for his existance; and bases his argument on facts, rather than hearsay, or personal opinion. We may never know whether or not King Arthur actually existed; however, Ashe treats us to a well written and fascinating look into myth and reality, as well as giving us a history lesson we cannot possibly fall asleep reading.

This book represents the culmination of a lifetime of research by a leading scholar. Geoffrey Ashe should be commended for the great advances he has made in uncovering the history underlying the legend of King Arthur. Even if one finally decides to reject (as I do) the equation of the historical Arthur with Riothamus, one must nonetheless come to share Ashe's appreciation that the history of Britain in this period cannot be properly understood apart from events transpiring elswehere in the Roman Empire, especially Gaul.

Geoffrey Ashe's book provides a much needed clarification of the romanticized Arthurian myth as it's known today. In a cautious and scientific method, Ashe sifts through Medieval annals and stories to find common links as well as inconsistencies to uncover the probable truth behind the myth. The book is approachable by all readers regardless of their historical knowledge and is written in a simple prose.

Writers and minstrels of Medieval Europe had little interest in historical truth as we do today and usually sought to impress their monarchs and nobles with fancy stories about the great origins of their titles instead. Sir Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthure' was no exception and, his version is even more suspect in that he wrote it hoping to please the king enough to get him out of prison. Although these early ballads and chronicles obscure more than clarify the true origins of the myths, they do recite certain common and recurrent facts or themes pointing to events during a specific historical period that can reveal glimpses of the truth that lies beneath.

With strong evidence and use of logic, Ash comes to certain tentative conclusions about the real Arthur. First, Ash goes to the earliest known chronicles which place Arthur at a much earlier date than later writers. Accounting for some identifiable errors in dates, Ash concludes that Arthur couldn't have lived past the 5th century A.D. which would place him in the final years of Roman Britain. Ash correctly recognizes that the name Arturios is a Latin name of which a Germanic Angle, Jute, or Saxon monarch would not have had. He also finds that the legends of Merlin and the Green Knight indicate a strong Celtic influence of druidism which would coincide with that period as Christianity was just beginning to propagate through England and Ireland with evangelists such as St. Patrick: a good portion of Britain and Ireland were still very much Celtic and pagan. Ash also found that the name Arturios sounds a lot like a Romano-Celtic war chieftain named Riothamus who existed approximately during the same period. Finally, Ash also suggests that the initial success of the Romano-Celts in repelling the invaders came hand in hand with some territorial expansions into northern Gaul in modern Britanny which would account for the myth of Lancelot. Gaul was of course also a Roman province that was suffering even more severe invasions at the hands of the Franks, Vandals, and other Germanic invaders during that time. He speculates that the mythical Arthurian prosperity of Camelot simply reflected these initial geo-political and economic successes. Ash also supports his theory with archeological finds dated to that period and etymological extrapolation form names and words.

Stories like the Arthur myths and the Song of Roland tended to be a Medieval minstrel's fancy account of obscure histories to please his audience of nobles and monarchs and were devoid of any factual truth: making these stories myths instead of history. Ash lifts the veil of these myths and points to the kernels of truth he did find leaving a final conclusion for future historians who dare to take the challenge. The book is easy to read and one doesn't require a high knowledge of history to understand his argument. Overall a great book with a lot of good information not only about the Arthurian myth, but also about a period of European history that doesn't offer a lot of information, hence appropriately referred to as the Dark Ages.

Unfortunately, Ashe chose to write his book in the form a detective mystery in which he explains how he unraveled the long-perplexing mystery of the historical Arthur. Thus, only near the end, does he actual set out his case. This makes for some tedious reading if one does not care about the mistakes of others before Ashe or is not already Arthur-Romance junkie. Hence, a general reader might want to cut the chase at the end of the book -- you can go back to crucial portions nearer the begining, which are cross-referenced by page number at the appropriate point.

Still, despite his choice of a ponderous format, Ashe's argument and conclusions are compelling, and I think it take a very strong argument indeed to disprove his find.

Ashe makes a compelling argument for the existence of a REAL King Arthur and has identified the landscape in which he operated. This book is very hard to put down -- I read it in one day, stirring my soup with one hand while holding the book in the other! I found myself reading it with my Ordinance Survey map opened to the appropriate places, and found it very helpful and convincing.
VERY highly recommended.

My library on ancient Britain holds well over 500 volumes.
Geofferey Ashe is considered the leading expert in this field. He is a very good writer, his books are interesting and even may be considered compelling to the study of this time of Britain. Highly recommended for anyone serious about this study.

Having just read to of Mr. Ashe's earlier books on the subject, I looked on the internet to see if he had any more recent ones, and found this one, which is up to the standard of his earlier works.
For my taste, it takes a little too long to get to the point, and after the most interesting section - the one in which he tells us who he thinks Arthur was, it gets back into less-interesting material on legends stc. While not suggesting such material is irrelevant, it becomes monotonous after a while, although his section on the way the Arthur stories fared later in history is very interesting.
This is not one of those books in which the author tells the reader how he/she located the information, and in which the finding could have been set out in a two-page article (although such books can be enthralling). Rather, it consists of sold scholarship from beginning to end, and I hope to read more from Mr. Ashe's research in the future.

Although this book was written a thousand years after the events analyzed there-in, I get the impression that Ashe is almost obsessed with finding out who King Arthur actually was.

Taken at face value, this disection of the known facts from that time does lead us to a reasonable conclusion that Ashe has determined who Arthur was. Interesting reading for history buffs and Arthurian's.