Customer Reviews

King Arthur: A Military History

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author does a good job of summarizing the situation in Britain following the withdrawl of the Romans: the threats represented by the Anglo-Saxons, Picts, and Irish are well covered. I found the discussion contrasting the Anglo-Saxon threat to Celtic Britain and the Frankish threat to Celtic Gaul very interesting.

His thesis that Britain and France developed differently largely because of the relative success of the British in delaying the eventual Germanic takeover compared to the rapid collapse of native forces in Gaul seems well-reasoned.

I agree with the other reviewers, however, that the chapters on the books primary subject, Arthur, are close to useless. Far too much is supposedly proved based on too little evidence. Arthur was a war leader in late 5th century Britain, almost everything beyond that is speculation and inference.

Buy this book for a good, concise history of Early Britain, not for King Arthur.

In this fascinating book, author Michael Holmes takes the historical references to fifth and sixth century Britain, and attempts to construct a chronology that fills in the details of this "Dark Age." Combining the information from a number of sources, often interpreted in new ways, he produces a thought-provoking history that helps to explain the different courses taken by Post-Roman Celtic Gaul (later France) and Post-Roman Celtic Britain (later England). Along the way, he finds that the legends passed on by the bards and storytellers ring true: that there was a great military leader named Arthur.

This is a fascinating book that I have already read twice. The author presents his argument in such a gripping manner, that reading it seems to pull the reader right into the story. It must be admitted that a good deal of what is presented in this book is deduction and assumption, but the author makes an excellent case for accepting his interpretation of the available (limited) data. If you are interested in the historic King Arthur, then I highly recommend that you get this book.

It is fascinating to read how Michael Holmes gathered evidence from many sources, minus the legendary stuff, to create a marvelous synthesis of the story of King Arthur and his military exploits. Holmes' study of history, archeology and British geography surely points out a plausible account of how Arthur influenced the future history of Britain in contrast to neighboring Gaul (France). After my reading the separate but conflicting histories, and my recent tour of Britain, I am persuaded by Holmes' account that his is most plausible. Any student of military history would also be intrigued and educated by the strategies utilized by Celts, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons in their military campaigns of the late Roman Empire and Dark Ages.

Feudalism is on the rise; the world is a cold, dark place; the
largest and most powerful nation is in a free-fall; pretty much
the world is spinning backwards. A boy sees only corruption in
the system but in a hope to make this boy great; his father sits
him down and tells him the story of Lancelot, King Arthur,
Camelot, and the magician Merlin. By telling this boy the fable of
King Arthur, his goal is to inspire and teach the boy to be good
and that even those people who seem insignificant can accomplish
seemingly unattainable goals. This is the same myth that Michael
Holmes tries to correct and prove to the reader is a true, real-
life story.
Michael Holmes marvelously writes the history of the Saxon
campaigns throughout Europe and the history of European
providences in King Arthur: Military History. Even though all of
that is wonderfully told in Holmes' book, he never really
illustrates the background and evidence connecting the legend of
Arthur in the medieval romantic tale Lancelot with the British 6th
century leader that he explains as the real King Arthur in the
introduction of his book.
In the book, Dr. Holmes seems to try to draw parallels between the
medieval King Arthur that was made up by the 12th century writers
and different historical figures in the 6th century that were head
of tribes in Britain and England with similar names. He claims in
the first chapter that there is no firm evidence of the life and
death of Arthur as told by the medieval writers, except that he
was killed in battle, which is historically factual with one of
the Germanic tribe leaders that Michael Holmes refers back to. He
also repeatedly, in the first couple of chapters, tries to relate
the stories to different real-life scenarios but then often says
later that they can be proven wrong, as well.
Dr. Holmes mentions a man named Artorius, who is of Roman-Celtic
descent. Then he somewhat discusses how Arthur could have lived in
one of the wealthy British-Roman regions around Gloucester and
Cirencester where the sites of many Roman Villages have been
found; however, he then states that there is no clear evidence
relating King Arthur with the 'evidence' that had been discovered
(Page 9).
Dr. Holmes' quest in getting information on the real King Arthur
clearly excites the reader's curiosity. In the first chapters, he
gives a good insight to the background information that led him to
what he writes in his book. However, throughout the book he goes
into more details of the invasion of the Saxons. He goes into
extreme depths on how early Europeans tried to secure their land
from the invading forces. He basically is able to magnificently
summarize about the withdrawal of the Roman influence as well as
their forces in northern Europe and the attack of the Saxons. He
pretty much fails at trying to prove to the reader that there is a
real King Arthur that led one of the British tribes. He does,
however, start to give some good information especially in his
first chapters and in the introduction chapter before it drifts
off into more of a European 6th century background of their
military's history after the fall of Rome in the northern
European provinces. Ironically the primary goal becomes proving
the existence of the 'great leader' King Arthur and disproving the
fiction that was made up by the medieval poets. At first in his
book, you can definitely sense the author's enthusiasm in clearing
the fairy tale picture of King Arthur that was put out by the
medieval writers and restoring the real Kings name, but that trait
in his book fades out as he goes more in depth with the different
campaigns that were taking place in Europe in the start of the
'Dark Ages'.
This book is great if you wish to read and invest in
more knowledge about early British leaders and their military
strategies in the beginning of the Dark Ages. But, if you're
looking for a book on the true story of Arthur, this is not where
you should look. This book was not very descriptive in Arthurian
history; it's practically useless as a source in trying to prove
the real existence of the fairy tale character King Arthur. Once
you read it, you will realize this is so with the very little
description of his true life and how he lived and thought. He
seems to rely on a little bit of evidence and embellishes these
thoughts to try to make this character real instead of realizing
that maybe these later writers were writing about this Brit, but
were actually trying to write a heroic story about a strong,
intelligent, and brave king to try to inspire the people of the
Dark Ages in such a horrible time period. But even with all
that, no doubt Michael Holmes is able to elegantly write a piece
of history. There was a Germanic leader in history named Arthur
that was in some ways a very good military strategist, but his
ties with the medieval writers' ideas of King Arthur could
possibly be non-existent. As far as I could tell, this book was
not able to convince me of that there is a connection. This book
is good for a look on the history of early Britain, but again not
a very good source on its actual subject, which would be who the
British leader Arthur really was.

It is fascinating to read how Michael Holmes gathered evidence from many sources, minus the legendary stuff, to create a marvelous synthesis of the story of King Arthur and his military exploits. Holmes' study of history, archeology and British geography surely points out a plausible account of how Arthur influenced the future history of Britain in contrast to neighboring Gaul (France). After my reading the separate but conflicting histories, and my recent tour of Britain, I am persuaded by Holmes' account that his is most plausible. Any student of military history would also be intrigued and educated by the strategies utilized by Celts, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons in their military campaigns of the late Roman Empire and Dark Ages.

King Arthur: A Military History by Michael Holmes is an interesting book for those of us who are fascinated with the old Celtic leader, but it is more creative "what if" than rigorous historical study. The catch lies in the fact that the foundation of Arthur's existence rests tenously on about three or four ambiguous ancient manuscripts. The information provided by Nennius, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the Annales Cambriae is about all we have to go on and the several lines of useful information in those have been hashed over so many times that one feels that there can be little new left to derive from them. Holmes lays out some more highly circumstantial evidence to "prove" not only Arthur's existence but that his impact on history in general was quite a bit more than the war-lord of a vanquished people. Having read a few other books on the subject, I did not find that these arguments added much to previous scholarship and were somewhat credulous while completely avoiding the most troublesome aspects of the question of Arthur's existence - namely, the complete absence of any specific reference to him by a Welsh contemporary, Gildas. Poor showing for the hero of the age!

Redeeming the book, if you're not too persnickety about suspending your skepticism up to that point, are chapters six through eight in which Holmes lays out what Arthur, granting all the questionable assumptions before, should have done to defeat the various invaders of Britain at that time in history. As long as you keep in the back of your mind that there is next to no evidence to support any of the specific campaigns, especially the East Anglian campaign and the shenanigans of Medraut, it is truly stimulating reading. I would recommend this book not as a critical evaluation of the existance of Arthur, it does not built a convincing case in my opinion, but as a stimulating exploration of military scenarios which make a lot of sense if you grant the initial conditions. Attributing the cultural, lingual, and philosophical differences between France and England primarily to a sixth century Celtic King is a bit of a stretch considering the complexities that shape a society over hundreds of years. But it still makes for a good yarn!

King Arthur: A Military History is one of the best analyses of Arthurian Britain to be published in a long time. Michael Holmes begins with a rather scientific approach to the subject: Roman Gaul and Roman Britain were nearly identical, but greatly different by the beginning of the Middle Ages. Narrowing the divergent influences to the interim Dark Ages, he then uses Gaul as a sort of "control group" to detect Arthur's presence and impact on English and British history. He then undertakes to outline Arthur's career, which I think he has done very well, including offering one of the best, most scholarly analyses of Mordred's role in history that I have ever read. Excellent book!

Having read extensively about Arthur and his legendary exploits, Holmes presentation examines the British history of the period against comparisons with the old western Roman empire, and the results are well worth effort. I found his conclusions believable, his theories refreshing and very interesting. He has approached this presentation in the same manner as would be done in making an intelligence assessment using all the known facts, grading levels of confidence, and speculating about a reasonable outcome. He does this very well and I am impressed with his efforts. Worth reading again. It surpasses any other material I have read so far.

The problem of an historical (as opposed to litterary) Arthur is that there is just enough material to justify an educated guess that he was a real (if idealized) person, but not enough to prove such a conclusion by any empirical standard, or to tell you much of anything about such a person. If you keep this in mind, then Holmes' book is pretty interesting, because it makes a series of educated guesses based on slim evidence that collectively create a plausible and heretofore unposited Arthurian history. Of course Holmes, like all other Arthurian "discoverers," cannot prove his claims by any standard, nor can he even reconcile all the "evidence" (mostly later literary references that may or may not have some historical basis based on earlier oral tradition). Moreover, the book does suffer from certain annoying defects, like its tendency to promise more than it can deliver (like "proving" that Arthur existed by reference to the British revival in the early sixth century and inducing that, if the Franks prospered because of Clovis, then the British must have had a smililarly great leader), and to overly rely on ethnic stereotypes (like his constant thesis that the Celts were wild and undisciplined in war and more prone to treachery and internal bickering than the Saxons). On the whole, however, the book is worth reading by anyone who considers himself (or herself) a serious student of the historical Arthur.

If your are really into this subject (I mean obsessed, like I am, with reconstructing a historically acurate [i.e. as best as can be done with the sparse and disjointed evidence available] Arthur and his Britain, then I can recommend adding this book to your collection, but it is really pretty unimpressive compared with some of the other books available. On the other hand, if you're only interested enough in this to read one or two books, I would not waste my time with this one. Holmes wastes entirely too much space speculating on how practically the whole modern world was shaped by the military brilliance of this one dark age leader. He also presents some of his information in a slightly irritating manner by constantly making passing references to points he wants to make only to keep informing you that he will truly flesh out his point in some later chapter. It really reads more like a college term paper than like a great work of historical scholarship. Holmes' tone throughout constantly betrays his excitement with his own "insights" into this subject as if he has formulated some brilliant new thesis on this topic. I'll be generous and give him 3 stars because he does provide some useful information here and there when he's not wasting time congradulating himself on having been so supposedly insightful and original. Part of the problem is that he tries to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of Arthur's carreer by practically making things up. He basically takes the approach of "if I had been in Arthur's shoes, this is how I would have conducted my campaigns, so that must be how it actually happened." The problem with this is that our knowledge of what actually happened is not nearly complete enough to warrant such presumptuous speculation; there are probably countless, unknown factors, circumstances, and situations which are not documented in any detail which affected the decisions and actions of fifth and sixth century leaders. For example, Holmes portrays Arthur's campaigns as being agressive, as if Arthur had the luxury to always pick and choose which enemies he would attack in a geographical pattern that was convenient for him. There is no evidence that the Britons, even under the great, legendary Arthur, always had such luxury. In fact, some evidence may even suggest that the Britons had to respond defensively to attacks made on them. Another problem is that he, like all too many authors on this subject, ignores exremely important evidence which has come to light if it doesn't fit with his personal agenda (see my review of _King Arthur: The True Story_ by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman). This is historical spin-doctory, not scholarship. He sights Leslie Alcock (_Arthur's Britain_, a book I have reviewed also) and John Morris (_Age of Arthur_, I haven't finished this one yet)as his primary sources of modern scholarship, which is great, but ignores Geoffrey Ashe, which really is a problem (see my review of Ashe's _The Discovery of King Arthur_). This is analogous to wrting a book on modern physics, based only on Newtonian principles, while ignoring Einstein!