The King Arthur Conspiracy (How a Scottish Prince Became a Mythical Hero)

Most of what we know – or think we know – about King Arthur came from the pen of one Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1137. His account in a History of the Kings of Britain quickly became the accepted version of events. It was, however, extremely wide of the mark. Geoffrey created a myth and allowed the English to imagine that Arthur was one of their own. A hero named Arthur undoubtedly existed, but his legend was stolen. The scam of Arthur’s grave and the subsequent myth that Glastonbury was the Isle of Avalon formed a further part of the early Church’s conspiracy to reinvent Arthur as an English paragon. So where is Avalon – the island on which Arthur was buried? And who was the original King Arthur? Simon Andrew Stirling draws on a vast range of sources and new translations of early British and Gaelic literature to identify history’s true Arthur, and to pinpoint his precise burial location on Avalon.