Customer Reviews

Quest for Arthur's Britain

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If I were reviewing this book when it was brand new at the end of the sixties, I would have had to give it five stars. The only reason that I am demoting it by a star is that it is slightly out of date. New archaeological data and new historical insights call for an updated edition of this great book. I wrote the chief author and editor of this book, Geoffrey Ashe, to congratulate and praise him for all his wonderful work on this subject. I especially praised his _The Discovery of King Arthur_ which was released in 1985 (I gave that one a five star review). I told him that since he had completely revolutionized the subject with that one, even great books like _Quest for Arthur's Britain_ and _Arthur's Britain_ by Leslie Alcock (I gave that one a four star review), who wrote some of the chapters of _Quest for Arthur's Britain_, now need to be updated a bit. I was extremely fortunate to get a reply from Mr. Ashe, who acknowledged that while these books were state-of-the-art when they first came out, they are now out of date in some ways. For example, some of the chronological data could stand to be updated; more and more data continues to come to light shifting certain events and figures back a bit; Arthur for example is now believed to have flourished about a generation earlier than was once thought. This beautifully illustrated book serves several functions: it gives an overview of the evolution of the Arthurian legend; there's a chapter on the end of Roman Britain; there are several chapters by great archaeologists (Phil Rhatz, C. A. Raleigh Radford, and Leslie Alcock) whose ground-breaking (excuse the pun) discoveries have greatly illuminated our understanding of the Arthurian age (5th and 6th centuries); and there is a good chapter on everyday life in the Arthurian age (food, fashion, etc.).

This book is often taught in Arthurian classes as an example of the mistakes historians can make by engaging with a problem with a preconceived idea of what they want to discover. Dr. Ashe presents evidence that does not preclude the existence of an Arthur and uses this for proof that there was an Arthur, which are not the same thing and would not be nearly so compelling to someone who did not begin believing that there was something to find. The development of an Arthurian tradition - and the stunningly disparate accounts of the supposed "man" himself - are so fractured as to make it difficult to find any single unitary thread. Far more likely that the idea of a single King Arthur grew from elements of Celtic folklore concerning heroes named Arthur and the more general desire for a salvation myth for P-Celtic culture, then in the process of being overrun by population shifts from mainland Germany and Denmark.