Customer Reviews

The Real King Arthur: A History of Post-Roman Britannia A.D. 410-A.D. 593 (2 Vol.Set)

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and particularly refreshing in it's lack of hype about discoveries of secrets leading to some revealed truth that are all too common in this sort of book. It is simply an attempt to dig through the historical record and construct a consistent and reasonable history of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries, and of the Romano-British military leader Lucius Artorius Castus, and how his story could well have become the story of King Arthur. I found it quite readable. The book is careful to document the references it draws on without drowning in footnotes, and it does a good job of balancing the historical presentation with discussions of how the stories could later have transmuted into the literary tradition of Arthur.

Turner has done a masterful job of assembling, analyzing, and interpreting the extant material about THE REAL KING ARTHUR. He presents a coherent, comprehensive, and scholarly opinion. He suggests the last Romano-British Imperator, Lucius Artorius Castus was the man we know today as Arthur. He says Arthur not only preserved the Romano-Britannic culture for two generations following the demise of the Western Roman Empire, he decisively shaped modern Scotland, and modern Wales, which still flies his `Red Dragon', is his legacy. Although the invaders from the continent (Anglo-Saxon) eventually conquered most of the island, they did not subdue the Celtic culture which can still be found in the western parts of the United Kingdom.

Turner's book is complexly written and filled with detail. Scholars will recognize his sources...Patrick, Gildas, Nennius, Bede, the Mabinogian, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, etc. In addition, Turner draws on recent archeological evidence to support his work. His knowledge of Latin, as well as the ancient Anglo-Saxon and Celtic (Welsh, Irish, Scots) languages is impressive. Using language as a tool, Turner first identifies and then links the relevant puzzle pieces. For example, he suggests Arthur's sister Anna Ambrosia (known as Mawr-anna or "great Anna" in her lifetime because she was the sister of Arthur) and the Celtic war goddess Morrigan became conjoined in the transmission of the Arthurian tales until, by the time of the Middle Ages, the French Romances characterized her as Morgan le Fey-traitorous sister and necromancer.

Arthur's stepfather Aurelius Ambrosius was the "utherpendragon" (overall big dragoon or "chief war leader" in Celtic) or "Magister Militum" (Latin). He married Ygerna, Arthur's mother after he slew her husband Gorlois (Arthur's father) in a battle for supremacy in southwestern Britain. A more recent example of this Celtic practice occurred when the Welsh Henry VII (red rose) married Elizabeth of York (white rose) after he slew her brother Richard III, thereby uniting the royal households (Tudor Rose). Turner suggests there was no prior connection between Aurelius and Ygerna and that Anna was Aurelius' daughter by a former wife. Aurelius, lacking a male heir, adopted the adult Arthur just as Julius Caesar adopted Augustus Caesar, his sister's son. Geoffrey of Monmouth did not understand the Roman practice of adult adoption so he used the wizardry of Merlin to explain the inconsistency between Aurelius' and Ygerna's wedding date and Arthur's birth date.

Probably the most interesting sleuthing Turner does involves the identity of the real Lancelot. Apparently, Anna's son and Authur's nephew Medrawd (Celtic) or Medrautus Lanceartius (Latin) was a brilliant horse soldier known for his skill with a lance. The gallant Mordred was left to guard the home front while Arthur was away, and he became restive and adulterously involved with Arthur's second young wife the beautiful but bored Gwenhwyfar (Findabair or white phantom because she was blonde). Understanding his uncle would probably kill him for his actions, he plotted Arthur's destruction which sadly led both to their deaths at Camlann in 542 A.D. In the Middle Ages, the Romancers could not grapple with the complexity of a man who was both good and bad, so they divided Medrautus Lanceartius into Mordred and Lancelot.

As coherent a discription of 5th Century Britain and the motives of it's inhabitants as anything else I've read. It's written in a roughly chronological sequence, and easy to read. I've found it to be one of the best books on the topic of a historical Arthur.

It is refreshing to read a book that treats history as a human activity, rather than a parade of empty facts. The transformation from Roman times to medieval times comes across as genuine people doing real things. The process of historical change is as fascinating as the people who make it happen. I highly recommend this book.

It tells a story of heroic adventure spanning several generations. It is an epic tale like Star Wars, except that it really happened. I was sad to learn that some of my favorite characters are only fiction, but I do not regret reading this book. The real characters are even better.

The author builds upon facts and solid conclusions to uncover the real history. He also engages in some speculations, some of which are more plausible than others. Certainly, his description of the period from which the legends arose seems right on. If it did not happen exactly as this book says, then it must have happened very much like it. The book is worthy contribution to the body of Arthurianhistorical books.

This book is almost exclusively concerned with battles. The author speculates about who led them, where they were located, how many troops of what type, whether a reported length of three days does or does not include a final day in which the fleeing members of the routed army were hunted down by the victors. There are occasionally some paragraphs interspersed which remark on the culture of the time, the lineage of one family or another, perhaps even land ownership or farming methods. It's hard for a novice to know whether this accurately reflects an era in which war was even more common and its carnage even more devastating to the average human than in our own time, or whether it is solely the bias of the writer, like a tale of the last decade as told by Secretary Rumsfeld.

Very enjoyable, however the attempt to synthesize what we know historically with the later, non-Welsh or Breton Matter of Britain, moves it into the realm of historical fiction, I think. It would form the basis for excellent fiction.

So, as for me, with my present level of knowledge, I don't regard this work as history, but it IS one of the better and more enjoyable works on the subject.

Yet, to paraphrase an early historian, "He is no John Morris."

Turner's grasp of the period that he writes about is truly remarkable. He delves into a period of history that has long been neglected and produces a truly remarkable book. I highly recommend it!

Tom Tinnelly

While Mr. Turner has clearly done his homework in terms of research as well as setting the historical stage for King Arthur, I find that he makes some leaps of logic in arriving at many of his conclusions. They are usually just on small items, but the number of them tends to add up and weigh against him in my opinion. Other authors on the subject (such as Ashe and Alcock, being trained historians) would not do the same. The faults of logic tend to be of the nature of "well, it's round and red so it MUST be a ball, and therefore I can bounce it" (even though it could just as well be an apple or a clown's nose and neither will bounce).

He would have been better off saying "it MIGHT be a ball" or "there's a good chance" without weakening his argument. But without concrete evidence making such absolute statements is dangerous, especially when assuming what a writer of 1,000 years ago was thinking- a la "what he said was X, but he didn't know what he was talking about and really meant Y"

This being said, I'm in the camp of believing Arthur was a historical figure, but I feel the "leaps of faith in logic" in Mr. Turner's book might work against our side in the long run.

Despite this, the book provides a wealth of information and makes for interesting reading.