Talk - The Truth about Arthur

A few years ago an inscribed stone from the early Middle Ages found at the site Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, caused a great deal of excitement. The inscription on the stone, scrawled in a Celtic-influenced Latin, was not complete, but you could clearly read the following words ‘PATER COLI AVI FICIT ARTOGNOV’. Some took ‘Artognov’ to be a Latinised version of ‘Arthur’. The 12th century historian Geoffrey of Monmouth had stated that Arthur, King of the Britons, had been conceived at Tintagel Castle. Hence the headlines in the national press. Had Camelot been discovered? Was King Arthur a Celtic lord, based in the West of England?
Of course there was a lot of disagreement about the significance of the stone, just as there has always been disagreement as to the basis of the Arthurian legends. Many historians hold Arthur to be no more than a mythical figure, a Celtic god converted into human form once the Celts turned Christian. Others believe that the Arthur legend was based on a real-life Romano-British fighter defending the island against the invasion of Anglo-Saxon invaders. Maybe there is a bit of truth to both theories. Whatever the case most of the Arthur legend is medieval invention: it is unlikely whether we’ll ever know more about the origins of our most popular monarch. So it will be interesting to hear what Dai Evans Morgan has to say about the matter in his lecture for the Lewes Archaeological Society ‘The Truth about Arthur’. Whatever it is, we’ll always prefer Graham Chapman’s Arthur to that of Sean Connery or Clive Owen. AG