In Winter’s Shadow, by Gillian Bradshaw. Book review

First published 1981. Edition reviewed, Sourcebooks 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-4074-4. 410 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

In Winter’s Shadow completes Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy, begun in Hawk of May (reviewed here earlier) and continued in Kingdom of Summer (reviewed here earlier). The central characters are Gwynhwyfar, her husband King Arthur, and Arthur’s chief commander Bedwyr. Other important characters are familiar from the legends, including Arthur’s illegitimate son Medraut and the warriors Gwalchmai (later Sir Gawain) and Cei. Fictional characters from the earlier books, including Gwalchmai’s servant Rhys and his wife Eivlin and Medraut’s companion Rhuawn, also reappear here.

After many years of struggle, Britain is approximately at peace. King Arthur and Queen Gwynhwyfar are beginning to restore some measure of prosperity and stability after the destructive upheavals of war. But although Arthur’s malevolent half-sister Morgawse is dead, the evil she set in train lives after her in the person of her son Medraut. Consumed by hatred, Medraut lives only to bring about the destruction of Arthur. Medraut’s first weapon is the shameful secret of his own birth. But it is the human frailties of Gwynhwyfar, Arthur and Bedwyr that give Medraut his second and most deadly weapon – one which may bring down not only Arthur but everything he has tried to achieve.

Although In Winter’s Shadow is billed as the third in a trilogy, it could be read as a stand-alone. Readers who have read the previous two will recognise events and people from them, and will pick up references to earlier incidents, but the main elements of the back story are filled in as necessary. Arthurian trilogies sometimes seem to fade by Book 3 or to sag under the accumulated weight of legend, but not in this case. I thought In Winter’s Shadow was the strongest of the three novels by quite a margin.

For me, the most compelling aspect of In Winter’s Shadow was the character of Gwynhwyfar, who narrates the novel in first person throughout. Gwynhwyfar as portrayed here is a fully three-dimensional character, with her share of human failings and her share of admirable qualities. She is intelligent and well educated, and sufficiently interested in the past to understand and share Arthur’s dream of recreating the best aspects of the lost Roman Empire, including impartial justice and respect for law. While Arthur is fighting battles, Gwynhwyfar is managing logistics and supply with a quiet fortitude that brings out the best in people and gets things done. Supply may be less than glamorous, but it is as essential as dashing tactics; as the old (apocryphal?) military saw has it, ‘Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics’. Arthur relies on her as much as on any of his warriors, and working together as partners in a shared task allows them to develop a deep and loving marriage. But the relentless immensity of the task inevitably puts a strain on their relationship, intensified by Medraut’s sly scheming.

The love triangle between Gwynhwyfar, Arthur and Bedwyr is completely convincing. No individual is entirely at fault, none is entirely blameless. They are three fundamentally good people who care deeply for one another, yet the conflicting demands of other loyalties, together with Medraut’s malice, conspire to twist their love into a destructive force. Gwynhwyfar is, naturally, at the heart of it, and her dilemmas, her choices, the consequences of those choices and the further dilemmas that follow from those consequences make for compelling reading.

The plot has few surprises for anyone familiar with the Arthurian legends. If anything, the well-worn tale makes the novel more poignant, as events rush to their inevitable conclusion and all the characters’ struggles to escape their fate merely serve to entangle them further. As well as the story of Gwynhwyfar, Arthur and Bedwyr, the tale of Gwalchmai and the boy Gwyn, begun in Kingdom of Summer, reaches its conclusion in In Winter’s Shadow. I noticed some deft references to other legends, for example the relatively minor character of Sandde Angel-face who appears in Culhwch and Olwen: “no-one placed his spear in him at Camlan, so exceeding fair was he; all thought he was an angel helping”. No doubt there are lots of other subtle references like this that I missed.

A plus point for me was that fantasy and magic play almost no role in the plot, much less than in the previous two books (This might explain in part why I thought In Winter’s Shadow the strongest of the trilogy). Gwalchmai still has his Otherworld sword and horse, but if they have any magical powers they are scarcely mentioned. Medraut is said to serve the ‘Darkness’, as his evil sorceress mother Morgawse did before him, but for the most part this could be taken as a metaphor for ordinary human vices such as cruelty and greed.

A sketch map at the front of the book is useful for following the characters’ journeyings, for those not familiar with the geography of Britain and Brittany, although not all the places mentioned in the text are shown on the map. There’s no Author’s Note in the advance review copy; I don’t know if there will be one in the final version.

Moving retelling of the Arthurian legend from the perspective of Gwynhwyfar, completing the story of Gwalchmai begun in Hawk of May and Kingdom of Summer.

Kingdom of Summer, by Gillian Bradshaw. Book review

First published 1981. Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4022-4072-0. 329 pages. Advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Kingdom of Summer is the second in Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy, sequel to Hawk of May (reviewed here earlier). The story still revolves around Gwalchmai (Sir Gawain in the later legends), though it is narrated by his (fictional) servant Rhys ap Sion. Many of the characters are figures from the legends, including Morgause, her husband King Lot of Orkney, their sons Gwalchmai and Agravain, Morgause’s illegitimate son Medraut, Arthur’s knights Cei and Bedwyr, and Arthur himself. Maelgwn Gwynedd, historical king of Gwynedd in the early to mid sixth century, appears as a secondary character*. The central character, Rhys ap Sion, and an Irish servant girl called Eivlin are fictional.

Rhys ap Sion is a freeborn farmer, peaceably working his family’s land near the River Severn. When a wounded warrior, Gwalchmai ap Lot, seeks hospitality at the farm in a bitter winter, Rhys feels drawn to him and goes with him as his servant to Arthur’s stronghold at Camlann and then on a diplomatic mission to Maelgwn Gwynedd. There Rhys encounters Gwalchmai’s sinisterly beautiful mother Morgause and suave brother Medraut, not to mention their attractive Irish serving girl Eivlin. As Rhys learns more of the dark secrets haunting Gwalchmai’s past, he comes to realise that the schemes afoot threaten not only Gwalchmai but Arthur’s kingdom itself.

Fantasy is less dominant in Kingdom of Summer than in Hawk of May, a plus point for me. Gwalchmai still has his magical Otherworld sword and horse, and supernatural duels and healing miracles feature in the plot, but for me the strongest aspect of the novel was the interplay between the characters. Apart from Morgause, who is evil incarnate (as expected from her role in the previous book), everyone has a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Gwalchmai is at first sight the ideal hero of legend, brave, courteous and near-invincible in battle, but he is haunted by his not-entirely-honourable treatment of a woman several years earlier, and he is endearingly hopeless at practical matters such as obtaining food and shelter. Agravain is a complete contrast, brash, arrogant, inclined to casual violence and not given to thinking if he can help it, but also likeable in his ebullience. Medraut is a contrast again, charming, subtle and persuasive. The conflicts between the three Orkney brothers are sharply drawn, and test Rhys’s loyalty to Gwalchmai.

Rhys himself, as the narrator, is a central character in the novel, and the tale is as much his as Gwalchmai’s. A hard-headed farmer – both literally and figuratively – he is rather out of his depth in the world of warrior honour and Otherworldly weapons, and his down-to-earth common sense is both a support and a contrast to Gwalchmai’s rather abstract concerns. The Irish girl Eivlin is a delight. Her first line, on being asked where she got that kettle, is to reply, “A hen laid it in the rafters, having been affrighted in a coppersmith’s shop”, which sold me straight away. In her own way, she demonstrates as much courage and loyalty as any of the warriors.

There are two distinct plot strands, Gwalchmai’s search for the woman he wronged and Morgause’s evil schemes to destroy Arthur and all he stands for. The first is resolved – although there is, I think, scope for it to reappear – and the second is clearly setting up for a climax in the last book of the trilogy. I shall be interested to see how it plays out.

There’s a sketch map in the front for anyone who is unfamiliar with the geography of Arthurian Britain, although not all the place names are marked and Less Britain appears to be placed in modern Picardy and Normandy rather than its more usual location in modern Brittany. The ARC has no historical or author’s note, although there may be one in the finished version. Not that it matters greatly, because the Arthurian legends have been told and retold so many times that they have near-limitless scope for interpretation.

Second in an engaging fantasy trilogy retelling the story of Gwalchmai (later Sir Gawain) of Arthurian legend.



*Although Maelgwn is dated to the early to mid sixth century (died in 547), I’m not sure that Kingdom of Summer is intended as set in the same period; Maelgwn may have been displaced earlier in time to make him contemporary with Arthur’s heyday. The author’s note for Hawk of May commented that ‘the novel is only partially historical’, so chronology is not that important.

King Arthur: The Bloody Cup, by MK Hume. Book review

Headline, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7553-4871-8. 526 pages. Review copy supplied by publisher.

Set in post-Roman Britain some time in the fifth or sixth century, King Arthur: The Bloody Cup is the third part of a trilogy retelling the Arthurian legend. Many of the main characters are familiar figures from the legends, including Artor (King Arthur), Wenhaver (Guinevere), Gawayne (Sir Gawain), Percivale (Sir Percival), Galahad, Bedwyr (Sir Bedivere), Nimue, Artor’s half-sisters Morgan and Morgause, and Morgause’s son Modred (Mordred). Other characters are fictional, such as Artor’s bodyguard Odin and spy chief Gruffydd, and the villains Pebr and Gronw.

Artor has ruled as High King of Britain from his citadel on Cadbury Tor for many years and is now growing old. He has no legitimate heir as his wife Wenhaver is barren, and his court has grown corrupt and decadent. Artor’s enemies sense that he is growing weak. Three mysterious figures hatch a plot to steal the sacred cup once owned by the saintly Bishop Lucius of Glastonbury, claim that it once belonged to the goddess Ceridwen and use it as a symbol to provoke a rebellion against Artor. The struggle for possession of the cup, and a mysterious spear, threatens Artor’s friends, his kingdom and his life.

I reviewed the previous book in the series, King Arthur: Warrior of the West, in January 2010, and concluded then that it wasn’t for me. The publishers sent me a copy of the third instalment without asking first, and I read it partly out of curiosity to see if the loose ends from Book Two were resolved and partly to see if I got on better with the style on further acquaintance. The answers are ‘sort of’ and ‘no’, respectively. This is still not a series for me.

On the plus side, it was quite fun to spot bits of the medieval legends – e.g. the Trystan-Isolde-King Mark love triangle makes a brief appearance, transplanted to north-east Wales instead of the traditional Cornwall – and the steady attrition of Artor’s friends and potential heirs has a certain poignancy. On the other hand, the corruption and decadence of Artor’s court is so strongly emphasised that it is not obvious why the reader is supposed to be worried when it is threatened. If Artor’s court is full of lies, vanity and backbiting courtiers trying to stab each other in the back while living in the lap of decadent luxury, it’s hard to suppress a niggling thought that a different set up might not be noticeably worse. The tragic grandeur of the Arthurian legend – a good king brought down by lesser men and by his own flaws – seemed to me to be missing from this retelling.

However, the main reason I did not get on with the novel was the same as last time; I found the writing style reminiscent of academic prose. Maybe the intention is to create an archaic flavour (although modern slang such as “gumption”, “sodding thing”, “shite” tends to work against this), but to me it seemed lifeless, especially the dialogue. People speak in grammatically correct complete sentences even when being tortured or when mortally wounded, and everyone sounds much the same.

Place names are a mix of Roman names, e.g. Ratae (modern Leicester), Verterae (modern Brough, Cumbria), and modern names with Old English elements, e.g. Glastonbury, Cadbury. If there is a pattern to the mix it wasn’t clear to me. Similarly, although the ‘Saxons’ are treated throughout as an utterly alien enemy to Artor’s realm (they don’t make an on-stage appearance), some of the characters in Artor’s kingdom have Old English names, such as the saintly Bishop Aethelthred* the Pure of Glastonbury. This struck me as potentially intriguing; does the presence of Old English names indicate that some ‘Saxons’ were acceptable in Artor’s realm, implying a degree of co-operation or integration, and if so, how is this reconciled with the fact that everyone at Artor’s court apparently regards the ‘Saxons’ as the enemy? Was Bishop Aethelthred a ‘Saxon’ immigrant, and if so how did he come to be the revered head of the greatest Christian monastery in Artor’s realm? As far as I could see this was never touched on, unless I missed it somehow, and it contributed to a general impression of unreality about the setting. This perhaps doesn’t matter, since the medieval Arthurian legends are set in a ‘once-upon-a-time’ setting, and this novel is perhaps best read in the same light.

A partial character list at the front of the book helps with keeping some of the large cast straight, and is especially useful for characters who played a role in the earlier books but who are now dead. However, not everyone is listed (e.g. Taliesin and Modred are missing, as are the villains Gronw and Pebr), so I still had to jot down notes. A glossary of place names at the back of the book matches some of the place names in the novel with their modern equivalents, but it is incomplete – I got confused between Salinae and Salinae Minor and looked in the glossary for clarification, but only Salinae is listed. Readers who like to follow the characters’ journeys on a modern map may find they have to keep notes.

Final part of a trilogy retelling the Arthurian legends, but not a book for me.




*I’m not sure if this is a typo for Aethelred, as Aethelthred or Aethelthryth was a female name, or if I have missed something subtle.

Hawk of May, by Gillian Bradshaw. Book review

First published 1980. Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks, 2010, ISBN 978-1402240706, 356 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Hawk of May is the first part of a fantasy trilogy retelling the Arthurian legends, focussing on Gwalchmai as the central character. Gwalchmai translates literally as “Hawk of May”, hence the title, and in later legend he becomes the character Sir Gawain. Other key figures in the legend feature as major characters – Arthur, his evil sorceress sister Morgause, her sons Agravain and Medraut (Mordred), Bedwyr (Sir Bedivere) and Cei (Sir Kay). Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere), not yet Arthur’s wife, gets a walk-on part near the end, and will no doubt reappear in the later books. The historical king of the West Saxons, Cerdic, makes an appearance. So do some other figures from the scanty historical records, such as Maelgwn Gwynedd and Urien Rheged, although they are displaced in time by half a century or more from their actual positions in the mid to late sixth century. The setting for Hawk of May is post-Roman Britain at approximately the end of the fifth century, taking the dates for Arthur’s major battles from Annales Cambriae and for Cerdic’s reign from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, as the author’s note says, “...since the novel is only partially historical, geography is not that important.” and neither is chronology. The novel works best when read as a story set in the timeless world of “once upon a time”, rather like the medieval Arthurian legends themselves.

Gwalchmai is the second son of Queen Morgause and her husband King Lot of the Orkney Islands. To his father’s disappointment, he shows no noticeable talent as a warrior, although he is a skilled horseman and harpist. Bullied by his elder brother Agravain, Gwalchmai leads a lonely existence until his beautiful mother, whom he worships, offers to teach him reading and, later, black magic. After witnessing some of its cruelties, he comes to fear and hate sorcery, renounces it, and after an adventure in the Otherworld he comes into possession of a magic sword and the skills to wield it. Magically returned to the real world in southern Britain, Gwalchmai sets off to offer his services to Arthur – but Arthur has his own dark reasons to hate and mistrust Morgause’s son. Will Gwalchmai ever persuade Arthur to accept him, and will either escape the shadow of Morgause’s evil magic?

Hawk of May is a fantasy novel, centred on a supernatural conflict between the forces of good (the Light) and evil (the Darkness). Gwalchmai undertakes a supernatural journey on a magic boat to the Otherworld, where he obtains a magic sword and later acquires a fairy horse. He has superhuman strength in battle, and has to physically fight and kill at least one real demon. The magical elements are key to the plot, whereas the approximate historical setting in somewhere in post-Roman Britain is incidental.

Within this fantasy environment, Hawk of May is a coming-of-age story, as the young Gwalchmai has to break free of his mother’s influence, make his own choices and earn a place for himself in the world. The plot mainly follows his upbringing and the circumstances that bring him to Arthur’s warband, so is fairly slight. Perhaps this reflects the book’s position as the first in a trilogy, setting up characters and situations for the novels to come.

Characterisation is effective, with most of the major players clearly drawn as individuals. Gwalchmai is endearingly humble, ever ready to attribute his battle success to supernatural favour rather than to his own prowess as a warrior. He grows from a child to a young man without losing his youthful idealism. Arthur, as portrayed here, is a charismatic battle leader, human enough to win his followers’ affection as well as their admiration. I can see why men would have been drawn to fight and die for this Arthur (something that isn’t always apparent in Arthurian fiction). Among the secondary characters, Cei and Agravain are archetypal ‘Celtic’ warriors, boastful, quarrelsome, flamboyant, cheerful and always ready for a drink or a fight, preferably both. Bedwyr is an intellectual as well as a warrior, with an interest in philosophy and a disinclination to take sides in petty quarrels. Morgause is pretty much pure evil, but given her traditional role in the legend it might have been rather tricky to make her a nuanced character. Gwenhwyfar is attractive and realistic, as far as I can tell from her very brief appearance, which bodes well for the rest of the series (assuming it is going to develop along the traditional lines).

Fantasy retelling of the Arthurian legend from the perspective of Gwalchmai, describing how he came to Arthur’s following as a young man.

King Arthur: Warrior of the West, by MK Hume. Book review

Edition reviewed: Headline, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7553-4868-8. 488 pages. Review copy kindly supplied by publisher.

Sequel to King Arthur: Dragon’s Child, this is the second in a trilogy retelling the Arthurian legends. Set in south-western Britain shortly after the end of Roman rule, most of the characters are familiar figures from the legends, including Artor (King Arthur), his second wife Wenhaver (Guinevere), his cousin Caius (Kay), his foster-father Ector, Myrddion Merlinus (Merlin), Nimue, Morgan, Morgause and her husband King Lot, Gawayne and Bedwyr (Bedivere). Other characters, such as Artor’s veteran swordmaster Targo and the spy Gruffydd, are fictional.

Artor, raised in Roman ways as the anonymous ward of the Roman nobleman Ector, is now established as High King of Britain with his capital at the rebuilt hillfort of Cadbury. He has one more battle to fight, against the Saxon chieftain Glamdring whose stronghold is at Caer Fyrddin (modern Carmarthen) in south-west Wales, for which Artor will need the help of his reluctant ally King Lot and an ex-slave named Bedwyr. Artor also knows he must marry again to beget an heir, but he is still traumatised by the tragic death of his beloved first wife (told in Book One). Eventually he weds Wenhaver, the beautiful, brainless, spiteful, blonde daughter of the powerful king Leodegran – reckless of Morgan’s long-ago prophecy that a woman with yellow hair will destroy his kingdom…..

This version of the perennially popular King Arthur story takes as its premise the inscription reported to have been found by medieval monks marking the grave of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere at Glastonbury Abbey. The inscription is now lost, and different sources give different versions of its wording (see the Wikipedia article on Avalon for discussion of its historical authenticity, or otherwise]). Gerald of Wales, a contemporary chronicler who apparently saw the inscription at or shortly after its discovery, gives the wording as:

Here lies buried the famous King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife in the isle of Avalon

--Quoted in Wikipedia article

If Guinevere was King Arthur’s second wife, legend is silent on the subject of his first wife so the novelist’s imagination has free rein. In this retelling, Artor’s first wife Gallia was a sweet Roman lady and the love of his life. Artor has never recovered emotionally from her cruel murder, so although Gallia is dead before Warrior of the West opens (her story is covered in Book One), the memory of her still shapes Artor’s feelings and behaviour. I thought this was an interesting premise.

Warrior of the West seemed to me to have a strong flavour of unreality, perhaps fantasy. This is not because it features magic – the book is refreshingly free of supernatural happenings – but comes from the general tone. For example, the name of Artor’s stupid and dastardly Saxon adversary in the first half of the novel is Glamdring. Fellow Tolkien geeks will immediately recognise this as the name of Gandalf’s elven-forged sword in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, meaning ‘Foe-hammer’ in Tolkien’s invented language Sindarin. The elements aren’t obviously present in the Old English dictionary, so it doesn’t immediately appear to be an Old English word that Tolkien adapted to his own purposes (as he did with ‘orc’). Even if it is derived from an Old English name, calling a major character ‘Glamdring’ certainly gave me a strong impression of a fantasy setting. This is reinforced by setting Glamdring and his Saxon stronghold at modern Carmarthen in south-west Wales, a place that isn’t usually associated with Saxons in Arthuriana. The author’s note credits The Keys to Avalon by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd as inspiration and/or source for the locations. I have to say I have not found this particular theory terribly convincing (for details, see Keith Matthews’ critique, available online), and this no doubt contributed to the impression of a fantasy setting.

As regulars will know, I enjoy ‘invented history’, so I have no problem with stories set in entirely imaginary worlds, with or without historical parallels. So the chief weakness of Warrior of the West for me was not in the setting but in its structure and its prose style. The book falls into two scarcely connected parts. The first part features Artor’s military campaign against Glamdring, and has a starring role for a courageous young ex-slave and warrior called Bedwyr with a prophetic destiny. Then at the end of this campaign Bedwyr disappears from the narrative entirely and is, as far as I can recall, never mentioned again in the rest of the book. The second part focuses on political chicanery and a sadistic serial killer at Arthur’s stronghold at Cadbury, with apparently little or no connection to the first part. Perhaps Bedwyr’s story will be taken up and integrated with the rest in Book Three; all I can say is that Warrior of the West felt disjointed. The style seemed to me to be excessively wordy, reminiscent of the more ponderous types of academic writing, or of the reports of Victorian antiquaries. Some readers might find this gives the book an archaic olde-worlde feel. I found it lifeless, especially in the second part of the book where there is less action and more court bickering.

Since I found the style dull, this probably explains why I also found that most of the characters never really came to life for me. Artor is an interesting mix of cold, calculating ruthlessness and passionate loyalty to his friends, and the Roman Army veteran Targo is sympathetically drawn as a no-nonsense salt-of-the-earth old soldier. Wenhaver is memorably portrayed as a spoilt, selfish, spiteful brat with no redeeming features whatsoever except that she has the face and figure of a Barbie doll (and about as much brain).

A couple of useful sketch maps at the front of the book show the arrangement of Glastonbury and Artor’s stronghold at Cadbury, and the Author’s Note provides an interesting discussion of the various sources for the legend and the author’s take on the characters.

Retelling of the Arthur legend based on an interesting premise, but the style isn't for me.

Pendragon’s Banner, by Helen Hollick. Book review

Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks 2009. ISBN 978-1-4022-1889-7. 458 pages.

Pendragon’s Banner is the second in Helen Hollick’s King Arthur trilogy (the first is The Kingmaking, reviewed earlier). I read and enjoyed the trilogy when it was first published, and am pleased to see it back in print. Many thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy and organising the blog tour (details of the other stops on the blog tour at the foot of the post).

Arthur, the illegitimate son of Uthr Pendragon, is now Pendragon and High King of Britain, after the political and military struggles recounted in The Kingmaking. But Arthur is still young, aged only 24, and his position is not secure. Other lords, such as Amlawdd in the south-west and Lot and Hueil in the north of Britain, fancy themselves as High King. The Council of Britain and Arthur’s uncle Ambrosius hanker after a return to the Roman Empire. Winifred, Arthur’s ex-wife, is scheming to get the kingship for the son she had with Arthur, Cerdic. Morgause, Uthr’s cruel mistress who has hated Arthur since his childhood, is plotting his destruction and has laid a curse on Arthur – that if he pursues her, none of his sons will live. Arthur, his beloved wife Gwenhwyfar and their young children are beset with dangers, and defending Arthur’s position as High King demands a heavy price. Will it be too high for their relationship to bear?

As with the previous book in the trilogy, Pendragon’s Banner is free of supernatural powers. No Merlin, no enchanted sword, no magic, no sorcery, no Round Table, no knights in shining armour. This is a good thing in my view, but readers looking for the fantasy aspects of the King Arthur legends will not find them here.

Pendragon’s Banner is a story of human love and conflict, centred on the two main characters, Arthur and his wife Gwenhwyfar. Gwenhwyfar, a princess from Gwynedd (modern north-west Wales), is the descendant of a long line of warriors and something of a warrior herself. She is beautiful, clever, hot-tempered, passionate and as strong-willed as Arthur, leading to frequent quarrels as their opinions and desires clash. Arthur is a military genius, but his skill on the battlefield is not matched in the council chamber. He makes no secret of despising his councillors as a bunch of irrelevant old fools, he antagonises his uncle Ambrosius, he provokes and belittles his loyal but strait-laced cousin Cei, and his jealousy over other men’s attentions to Gwenhwyfar (real or imagined) gets him into more than one fight. The stormy marriage between Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, their private family tragedies, and the intolerable stresses resulting from the conflict between Arthur’s position as High King and his role as husband and father, form the core of the narrative.

The novel spans a period of about seven years, giving ample opportunity for a lot of warfare and political scheming as well as the personal relationships. It also incorporates numerous legends attached to the King Arthur story, such as the tale of Ider fighting a giant on Brent Knoll near Glastonbury and a quarrel between Arthur and Gwenhwyfar at the Queen’s Crags on Hadrian’s Wall. Perhaps as a result of including so many legends, the book is a lengthy read and I found the plot rather sprawling. Arthur has to face not one but two rebellions in the north, Morgause and Winifred are constantly hatching schemes, Arthur and Gwenhwyfar quarrel and make up, become estranged and reconciled and quarrel again. Some plot threads, such as Arthur’s alliance with the Saxon leader Winta, are introduced in detail and then disappear, perhaps because this is the middle part of a trilogy and they may be setting up for something in the third book.

Detailed descriptions of landscape and weather, among other aspects, make for a leisurely pace. This is accentuated by the elaborate prose style (e.g. “had the wanting of” instead of “wanted”), which sets a consciously archaic tone and sometimes requires more than one reading to disentangle the meaning. Keeping track of everything takes concentration, and readers may like to take note that typos in some of the dates in the chapter headings can be confusing (e.g. Chapter 43 in Part 1 is headed “April 456”, but is a continuation of the battle in the previous few chapters headed “December 462”). Although the backstory from Book One is explained where necessary, the trilogy works best if read back to back as a single long story.

A helpful Author’s Note explains some of the background, and a family tree at the front of the book helps in keeping track of the family relationships between the large cast of characters. There’s also a very useful list of place names with their modern equivalents (but note that Wroxeter and Winteringham have been mistakenly reversed in the list), and a list of questions for reading groups to consider.

Book Two of a trilogy retelling the King Arthur legends without fantasy trappings.

The other stops on the Pendragon’s Banner blog tour are as follows:

The Tome Travellers Weblog (10/12)
A Reader’s Respite (10/12)
Enchanted by Josephine (10/14)
Fumbling with Fiction (10/14)
Found Not Lost (10/15)
Nan Hawthorne’s Booking the Middle Ages(10/15)
Jenny Loves to Read(10/16)
The Review From Here(10/17)
The Courtier’s Book(10/18)
Chick Loves Lit(10/19)
Love Romance Passion (10/20)
He Followed Me Home… Can I Keep Him?(10/20)
The Impasse Strikes Back (10/21)
S. Krishna’s Books (10/22)
Books Like Breathing (10/23)
Passages to the Past(10/24)
Virginie Says(10/25)
Readaholic(10/25)
Reading with Monie (10/26)
Rundpinne(10/26)
Books & Needlepoint(10/27)
Capricious Reader (10/27)
Books are my Only Friends (10/27)
A Sea of Books (10/28)
Bloody Bad (10/28)
Revenge of the Book Nerds! (10/28)
Booksie’s Blog (10/28)
Devourer of Books (10/29)
Peeking Between the Pages (10/29)
Starting Fresh (10/29)
Historical Tapestry (10/30)
Medieval Bookworm (10/30)
Book Soulmates (10/30)
Susan’s Art & Words (10/30)
Steven Till(10/31)
Café of Dreams (10/31)

Twilight of Avalon, by Anna Elliott. Book review

Edition reviewed: Touchstone 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-8989-1. 426 pages.

Twilight of Avalon is subtitled “A novel of Trystan and Isolde”, and is billed as Book 1 of a trilogy. It’s set in Britain seven years after King Arthur’s death at the battle of Camlann, some time in the first half of the sixth century or thereabouts. Trystan, Isolde and King Mark (here spelled Marche) are famous characters in Arthurian legend, and other characters from the legends such as Merlin, Mordred and Arthur’s sister Morgan make appearances. The author’s note says that Madoc of Gwynedd is loosely based on the historical figure of Maelgwn Gwynedd. All the other main characters are fictional.

Isolde is the illegitimate daughter of Mordred, King Arthur’s son and nephew by incest with Morgan, and of King Arthur’s unfaithful wife Guinevere. Orphaned at the age of 13 when Mordred was killed fighting Arthur at Camlann, Isolde was married to Arthur’s heir, the boy-king Constantine and made High Queen of Britain, at least in name. Now Constantine has been killed, in battle as is thought (though Isolde knows it was murder), and Isolde’s position at court has become extremely precarious. She is widely distrusted as a witch, because of her descent from Morgan and because she has skills as a healer and a limited power of second sight. Evil King Marche of Cornwall is scheming to get the High Kingship for himself, and forces Isolde into marriage as part of a traitorous plot. With her only possible ally among the lesser kings dead in suspicious circumstances, Isolde flees from the court at Tintagel to seek evidence of Marche’s treason. She finds herself forming a reluctant alliance with a mysterious prisoner, Trystan, who has lately escaped from Marche’s dungeons, and his three rag-tag companions. Isolde must not only find a way to foil Marche’s treason, but also come to terms with her own past.

If you’re familiar with the story of Tristan and Isolde from Wagner’s opera or from the Arthurian romances, you’ll find Twilight of Avalon a very different take. Despite the “sweeping romance” promise in the cover blurb, the traditional romantic love story doesn’t make any appearance at all, though there are hints that it may be intended for Book 2 and/or 3. There’s no glamorous Camelot and no high chivalry. The setting is the darkest of Dark Ages, an unremittingly grim world of violence, chaos and betrayal. With few exceptions, the kings of Britain are violent, arrogant, deceitful, self-centred and/or a bit thick. None of them features on the list of tyrants named by Gildas in On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain*, but they are clearly cut from the same cloth. The lives of the warrior aristocracy are nasty, brutish and short; you probably don’t want to imagine how miserable this world must be for the peasantry off-stage.

There are some fantasy elements to the novel, and some features of the traditional high medieval setting are retained. Tintagel is a stone-built castle with turrets and dungeons, travellers with no money living rough eat rabbit stew and wear rabbitskin cloaks**, literacy is so all-pervasive that an uneducated man who cannot read and write says of another character “he might as well have ‘Saxon’ stamped on his forehead”, copper coins are a standard medium of exchange and despite the chaos and poverty there is sufficient of a mercantile economy for a hermit living on a wild moor in the middle of nowhere to have ready access to a supply of wine. A crucial plot twist depends on Isolde having a real power of second sight that actually works, and another depends on a character apparently seeing a ghost conjured up by some supernatural power on Isolde’s part. Isolde has somehow induced total amnesia about her entire life prior to the battle of Camlann, apparently by effort of will, and hears strange supernatural voices. That said, there is much less mysticism and magic than in many Arthurian novels, which was a major plus point for me. An early reference to goddess-worship and the Christian church being responsible for the oppression of women had me rolling my eyes, but I was glad to find that the question of religion is more interestingly handled as the book develops, with an open-minded Christian hermit drawing a parallel between magic and miracles.

The pace is leisurely, not to say slow. With its minute-by-minute account of Isolde’s thoughts and feelings, the narrative can take a lot of pages to cover not very much ground. For example, the first two chapters (27 pages) are occupied by Isolde contemplating the body of her dead husband in church, and taking food to two prisoners and tending their injuries occupies 17 pages. About a third of the way in I had hopes that the plot might pick up, as Isolde decides to go in search of a goldsmith-cum-spy who can bear witness to Marche’s treachery, but was disappointed. The narrative promptly bogged down again in a sequence of escape, recapture, re-escape, re-recapture and re-re-escape interspersed with scenes of Isolde nursing just about every other character through illness or injury, the goldsmith was never mentioned again and the urgent need to find proof of Marche’s treasonous dealings seemed to just fade away. I wonder if the book was drastically cut to length and half the plot vanished, leaving these (to my mind) rather annoying loose ends, or if perhaps they are going to be picked up somehow in Books 2 and 3. I also felt the escape-recapture cycle got a bit repetitive for my taste. Guards working for an evil tyrant are traditionally inefficient, partly for plot purposes and partly because tyrannical leadership styles rarely get the best out of their subordinates, but having the same guards fall for the same trick pulled by the same prisoner twice within a few days stretched my credulity.

Twilight of Avalon is very much Isolde’s story, as all events are seen through her eyes and understood through her feelings. Fortunately, Isolde is an attractive and even admirable character. She is essentially powerless, a pawn in the games of kings like Marche, but she is not weak, she never whines and she never gives up. She makes use of her wits, her limited supernatural powers and whatever else comes to hand in her quest to outwit Marche. Isolde is also a gifted storyteller, and numerous tales and legends are nested into the narrative, giving an extra layer of depth to the setting. Isolde dominates the novel so completely that I found my perception of the whole book altering with my reactions to her character. Twilight of Avalon should suit readers who like to identify with a particular character, provided they take to Isolde and her emotional journey.

The secondary characters – everybody else – perhaps divide a little too readily into good and bad, though Madoc of Gwynedd is an interestingly complex character with a mix of qualities. I hope to see more of him in the sequels. I’d have liked to see more of his point of view in this novel, particularly with regard to his apparently sudden change of heart. I’d also have liked to see Trystan’s viewpoint. Isolde’s amnesia governs her reactions to him (and is essential to the plot), but Trystan has no similar amnesia and I was curious about his motivations and his opinion of (and feelings for?) Isolde. He spends most of the novel in a prison cell, almost as powerless as Isolde, yet he clearly has experience and skills as a soldier and a leader of men. I hope Trystan’s role will be further developed in the sequels.

Although billed as Book 1 of a trilogy, Twilight of Avalon feels to me like the first third of a single long book. The mystery of Trystan’s identity is resolved (for those readers who didn’t guess it as soon as he appeared, or at least as soon as he was named), but little else is. The outcome of Marche’s treasonous dealings, the ongoing war, Trystan’s role, Isolde’s position at court, and her relationship with the lesser kings and with Trystan are all To Be Continued.

First instalment in a retelling of the Tristan and Isolde legend, with a strong focus on Isolde’s emotional journey and a refreshingly low quotient of magic and mysticism.



*Madoc of Gwynedd is loosely based on Maelgwn Gwynedd, who is usually identified with Gildas’ Maglocunus, but if the character has done any of the outrageous things for which Gildas castigated his historical counterpart, they don’t feature in the book.

**There’s a debate about whether the Romans or the Normans introduced rabbits to Britain, but in the 13th century rabbit was an expensive luxury food. Rabbits didn’t become the ubiquitous free country pie filling until at least the late Middle Ages.

The Kingmaking, by Helen Hollick. Book review

First published 1994. Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4022-1888-0. 563 pages.

I read and enjoyed The Kingmaking when it was first published, and am pleased to see it back in print. It is the first in the Pendragon’s Banner trilogy, a retelling of the King Arthur story from Arthur’s boyhood to his death. Arthur and his wife Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere is the later medieval spelling of the same name) are the central characters. The Kingmaking covers the period 450–457 AD, and Arthur is aged 15 at the beginning of the novel. Many of the characters, such as Arthur, Gwenhwyfar, Uthr, Ygrainne, Morgause, Cei and Bedwyr, are familiar from Arthurian legend. Others, such as Hengest, Vortigern and his wife Rowena, Ambrosius and Cunedda are known from historical sources although not always associated with Arthur.

Uthr Pendragon, exiled from Britain many years earlier after being defeated in battle by Vortigern, returns to try to reclaim his throne with the help of his old friend and ally, Cunedda of Gwynedd. Cunedda’s feisty daughter Gwenhwyfar takes an immediate dislike to Uthr’s companion, a boy of unknown parentage called Arthur, until a shared dislike of Uthr’s evil mistress Morgause brings the two together. When Uthr’s bid for power ends in his death and Arthur’s true parentage is revealed, it seems that the fates of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar will be woven together. But Vortigern and his malicious daughter Winifred have other ideas, and soon Arthur and Gwenwhyfar find themselves entangled in a web of politics, war and ambition that threatens to divide them for ever.

The first thing to say about The Kingmaking is that it is a story of human love, hatred, loyalty, betrayal, war and politics without any of the supernatural elements that have come to be associated with the Arthur legends. There is no Merlin, no magic and no enchanted sword in a stone. This is no loss in my view, quite the reverse, and some of the author’s suggestions for incidents that could have led to the supernatural parts of the legend are highly ingenious and great fun to spot. But readers who like magic and enchantments should look elsewhere.

The Kingmaking places Arthur in the middle of the fifth century as a contemporary of Vortigern and predecessor of Ambrosius Aurelianus, whereas it is more usual to place Arthur after Ambrosius. Given that there isn’t an uncontested date in the two centuries of British history between the Rescript of Honorius in 410 AD and the arrival of St Augustine in 597 AD, the dates for Arthur’s life are fair game for the novelist’s imagination.

What I found most memorable about The Kingmaking was the characterisation of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar. Both are fully rounded individuals with a mix of good and bad qualities, and both do admirable and not-so-admirable things. Arthur is dynamic, enthusiastic and brave, but also ruthless, ambitious, not above lying and cheating to gain his ends, and often fails to control his appetites for drink and women, with consequences that range from awkward to disastrous. Gwenhwyfar is bold and passionate, as brave as Arthur, but wilful and hasty to rush to judgment. Both are proud, hot-tempered and inclined to speak before thinking, leading them to inflict pain on each other and those around them. Their relationship is an emotional rollercoaster even without the obstacles thrown in their way by the political manoeuvrings. Life for them and for those around them, must be exhausting and exciting in about equal measure. Gwenhwyfar is a little too much of the warrior heroine for my liking, and as far as I know not one legend even hints at Gwenhwyfar as a warrior. Though as so little is known of the period, who’s to say it’s impossible?

Of the secondary characters, I found the men more varied and convincing than the women. Gwenhwyfar’s brothers include the cheerful Etern, the quietly competent Enniaun, and the henpecked Osmail, Cei is upright and honest, and the pedantic Emrys (Ambrosius Aurelianus) has potential though he hardly appears in The Kingmaking. Even Vortigern and Hengest are rational men who deal in realpolitik, however unpleasant. In contrast, Morgause is pure evil and Winifred (Vortigern’s fictional daughter) is pure spite, and I found both somewhat tedious. I had the impression of a sharp fault line between the good guys (Arthur, Gwenhwyfar and their friends and allies) and the bad guys. Vortigern, Hengest, Rowena, Winifred, Melwas and Morgause, all Arthur’s enemies, are deceitful, cruel, vindictive, cunning, spiteful and/or selfish. Hengest is brave, but apart from that they hardly have a redeeming feature between them.

One notable feature is that the horses are almost secondary characters in their own right. I have the impression that the author knows a lot about horses and their ways, which adds an extra dimension to a novel in which cavalry warfare plays such a large part.

The complex politics of a power struggle in a dying empire are convincingly portrayed. Vortigern and Uthr are rivals for the position of supreme ruler of Britain; Vortigern’s sons and Arthur are similar rivals; Hengest and his followers are Vortigern’s paid allies, but have an eye to their own advantage; Cunedda is an independent power in Gwynedd, inclined to side with Uthr and then Arthur against Vortigern but no man’s lapdog; Rowena, Winifred and Gwenhwyfar are all rivals for the position of Queen to the current king and mother of the next one. Add in local kings and chieftains, and there are enough plot threads to weave a tangled tale. The narrative skilfully cuts back and forth between the threads so that none of them is left for too long, but you do have to pay attention. The Kingmaking is a long book (550+ pages) and a complicated one; it’s not a quick read.

A delightful feature is the ingenious take on the legend of the sword in the stone (no, I’m not going to tell you what it is). So much so that I thought it a great shame that it only appeared at the end. The marvellous sword is such a central component of the legend that I’d have liked to see it play an integral role in the plot from much earlier on.

A down-to-earth retelling of the King Arthur story as that of a ruthless fifth-century soldier and his feisty queen.


Q&A with Helen Hollick
As part of the blog tour to launch this new edition of The Kingmaking, author Helen Hollick kindly answered a few questions for me. Here they are:

Q. In The Kingmaking, you have Arthur coming to the kingship in around 456 AD and personally defeating Hengest. This is rather earlier than usual, as Arthur is more usually placed some time after Vortigern and Hengest. Why did you choose to make him their contemporary?

A. This time frame was more logical – and it was not my own idea. The Arthurian historian Geoffrey Ashe suggested it, and his theory was most convincing. There is no evidence for any of these dates – indeed, there is no evidence that Arthur even existed – but by looking closely at the early Welsh legends and the few pieces of contemporary writing that we do have, placing Arthur these few years earlier seemed, to my mind, to fit the missing piece of the jigsaw into the puzzle.

Q. In your story, Arthur's wife Gwenhwyfar is the daughter of Cunedda, the founder of Gwynedd in modern north-west Wales . Tell me more about what led you to place Gwenhwyfar there.

A. Cunedda was a real person. He and his family were forcibly moved from Traprain Law (near Edinburgh , Scotland ) to North Wales possibly around 430 – 450 ish.. We do not know why, or who moved him. I thought it was a good story to use, and since reading Sharon Kay Penman’s wonderful novels about Gwynedd (especially Here Be Dragons) I was determined to combine the two.

Then, while researching some genealogies (admitted not necessarily reliable) to my delight I discovered he may have had a daughter called Gwyn.

Well, that was it! My ideas were set!

Q. What first drew you to want to retell Arthur and Gwenhwyfar's story?

A. While working in a local public library I re-discovered Rosemary Sutcliff’s superb teenage novels set in Roman Britain – Eagle of the Ninth, Frontier Wolf, Mark of the Horse Lord etc, and then Mary Stewart’s Hollow Hills Trilogy, and there I discovered an Arthur who was very different to the one of the Medieval Tales.
I had never liked the ‘traditional’ Arthurian stories as I could not accept that King Arthur was so bad a king to abandon his kingdom and his wife and go in search of the Grail. Surely he would have foreseen that Lancelot and Guinevere would have an affair? I also disliked Lancelot and all those too-good-to-be-true knights. None of it seemed real history.

Mary Stewart’s novels had an author’s note which stated that if Arthur had existed he would have been a Romano British war lord. I liked that idea very much and read all I could about the ‘real’, more interesting Arthur. But then the existing novels began to irritate me. Knights in armour, chivalry, turreted castles… this was not right for the Dark Ages. It was fine as a fairy tale but not as an historical novel.
These stories were not how I saw things. I was so frustrated with one portrayal of Gwenhwyfar that I threw the book across the room!

I had had enough. The only way to relieve my frustration was to write my own story. There would be no knights, grails, round tables. No myth, no magic. No Lancelot, no Merlin.

Instead, I explored the early Welsh legends of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar. These legends turned out to be far more exciting and emotional than the Medieval stories. Arthur was more plausible. Arthur was suddenly real.

It took me ten years to write what eventually became The Kingmaking. It was first published in the UK almost 15 years ago – and since then the trend has very much fallen towards portraying Arthur in his correct time period – the Dark Ages, between the going of the Romans and the coming of the Anglo Saxons.

Thank you, Helen!

Helen is participating in a Blog Tour in honour of the publication of The Kingmaking. Here are the stops:

http://harrietdevine.typepad.com/harriet_devines_blog/2009/02/the-kingmaking.html 2/20

http://lazyhabits.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/the-kingmaking/ 2/21 and interview 2/27

http://carpelibrisreviews.com/the-kingmaking-by-helen-hollick-book-tour-giveaway/ 2/23

http://www.historicalnovels.info/Kingmaking.html 2/23
http://www.historicalnovels.info/historical-novels-blog.html

http://www.bibliophilemusings.com/2009/02/review-interview-kingmaking-by-helen.html 2/23

http://lilly-readingextravaganza.blogspot.com/2009/02/kingmaking-by-helen-hollick.html 2/23 and guest blog 2/25

http://chikune.com/blog/?p=484
http://chikune.com/blog/?p=488 2/24

http://booksaremyonlyfriends.blogspot.com/ 2/25

http://peekingbetweenthepages.blogspot.com/ 2/26 and guest blog 2/27

http://webereading.blogspot.com/ 2/26

http://www.caramellunacy.blogspot.com 2/26

http://bookthoughtsbylisa.blogspot.com/ 3/1

http://www.skrishnasbooks.com/ 3/1

http://jennifersrandommusings.wordpress.com/ 3/1

http://rhireading.blogspot.com/ 3/1

http://passagestothepast.blogspot.com/ 3/2

http://thetometraveller.blogspot.com/ 3/2

http://steventill.com/ 3/2

http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com / 3/2 and interview 3/3

http://www.carlanayland.blogspot.com/ 3/3

http://readersrespite.blogspot.com/ 3/3 and interview on 3/5

http://libraryqueue.blogspot.com/ 3/4

http://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/ 3/4

http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/ 3/5

http://samsbookblog.blogspot.com 3/5

http://goodbooksbrightside.blogspot.com/ 3/5

The Wicked Day, by Mary Stewart. Book review

First published 1983. Edition reviewed, Hodder, 2006, ISBN 0-340-35214-0

Set in Britain in the latter part of King Arthur’s reign, approximately the early sixth century, The Wicked Day tells Mordred’s story. The major characters are familiar figures from the legend: Mordred, Arthur, Guinevere, Bedwyr, Arthur’s half-sisters Morgause and Morgan, Morgause’s Orkney sons Gawain, Gaheris, Agravaine and Gareth, and Merlin’s successor Nimue. Some secondary characters, such as Morgause’s lover Gabran, the goldsmith and his slave/spy, and Mordred’s foster parents, are fictional. The story follows on from Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy, but is not part of it.

Mordred is Arthur’s illegitimate son and nephew, the result of Arthur’s brief incestuous liaison with his half-sister Morgause. Merlin the enchanter prophesied that Mordred would be Arthur’s downfall (see the Merlin trilogy for this part of the story), and Morgause has raised Mordred in secret on the remote Orkney islands, waiting for the day when she can use Mordred to destroy her hated half-brother. When Mordred discovers his parentage, he loves and respects Arthur as both father and king. He defies his mother’s schemes and vows to serve Arthur faithfully – but Fate may not be so easily denied.

The story is told in third person mainly from Mordred’s point of view. Mary Stewart notes that she wanted to add some “saving greys” to the traditional portrait of Mordred the black villain, and I would say she has gone further than this and created him as a complex and fascinating character. Mordred is intelligent, ambitious, resourceful, quick-thinking and honourable. He is eager for power, cool in a crisis, self-contained, analytical and rather cold-blooded, a sharp contrast to his volatile and violent Orkney half-brothers. Although Mordred is attracted to Queen Guinevere, this seems to be something of an adolescent crush and isn’t reciprocated. It would be hard to imagine this rational and self-controlled Mordred falling head over heels in love with anyone; he is much more interested in running the country. Mordred has qualities that could have made him a worthy successor to Arthur, and his death at the ill-fated battle of Camlann is no less a tragedy than Arthur’s.

Mordred is the central character, and because he is not overly concerned with putting himself inside the skin of others, he dominates the book. The other characters are secondary, though they are still drawn as distinct individuals. Apart from the villainous Morgause, most of the characters are a mix of good and bad qualities. As with the Merlin trilogy, the novel is beautifully written, and the poetic descriptions of landscape and wildlife are especially vivid.

The plot is an interesting take on the traditional Mordred legend, which Mary Stewart has managed to turn into a halfway credible plot. This is no mean feat, because the story as it has come down in legend has some manifest absurdities of character and motivation (why would the wise and experienced Arthur leave his kingdom and his wife in the charge of his arch-enemy? Why would Mordred make an attempt at a coup when he knew Arthur was still alive and at the head of an army – surely a sensible villain would have thought to send an assassin first?). Mary Stewart comments that she wanted to “iron out the absurdities” and provide Mordred with some kind of reason for his actions. As with The Last Enchantment, there are so many episodes in the legend that have to be touched on that the story sometimes creaks a little under the weight. In particular, the series of coincidences that lead to the disastrous battle of Camlann would be outrageous without the context of an implacable destiny. Camlann has a place in later Welsh legend as the epitomy of pointless slaughter – it is listed in the Welsh Triads as one of the Three Futile Battles of the Island of Britain – and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur refers to it as “the wicked day of destiny”. This sense of the working out of a malign Fate is very strong in The Wicked Day.

The novel is based on the Arthur legends as recounted in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, which gives the reader fair warning not to get pedantic about looking for historical fact (insofar as there is any such thing in fifth and sixth century Britain). The only reference to Mordred prior to Geoffrey’s twelfth-century bestseller is in Annales Cambriae, “The battle of Camlan, where Arthur and Medraut fell”, which does not even say that the two were enemies. As Mary Stewart comments in the Author’s Note, “For none of the ‘Mordred story’, then, is there any evidence at all.” The novel works best when seen as a retelling of the legend.

The Wicked Day follows on from the Merlin trilogy and is consistent with it, but is not a continuation. Merlin does not appear and is hardly even mentioned. Apart from the sense of implacable fate, there are very few fantastical elements in The Wicked Day, consistent with Mordred’s rational character. The Wicked Day is very much Mordred’s story, and can be read as a standalone (though I should imagine that as the Merlin trilogy is much the more famous, most readers will already have read Merlin’s story before they get to Mordred’s).

An intriguing and attractive retelling of the latter part of Arthur’s legend from the point of view of Mordred, who is made much more interesting than the black villain of tradition.

Merlin Trilogy, by Mary Stewart. Book review

The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment

Set in Britain in roughly the second half of the fifth century AD, Mary Stewart’s take on the familiar King Arthur legend is narrated by Merlin the enchanter.

The first novel, The Crystal Cave, introduces Myrddin Emrys (Merlin) as the illegitimate son of the unmarried Princess of South Wales and an unknown father. His lonely childhood, tolerated rather than accepted at his grandfather’s court, takes a turn for the better when Merlin encounters the wise Galapas, a hermit living in a cave above the town. Galapas teaches the young Merlin not only medicine, music, natural history and languages, but also how to use his strange spiritual gifts of vision and prophecy. The Crystal Cave of the title refers to a crystal-lined geode off Galapas’ cave, where Merlin first experiences his power of second sight. His grandfather’s death and his uncle’s ambition send Merlin, aged 12, in flight for his life. Chance - or fate - takes him to Brittany where Aurelianus Ambrosius, rightful King of Britain, is living in exile and building up an invasion force to reclaim his throne. Ambrosius (Latin form of the name Emrys) is revealed as Merlin’s real father. Merlin joins his father’s cause, and his powers of prophecy and vision place him at the centre of tumultuous events as Ambrosius challenges the usurper Vortigern for the throne of Britain and Ambrosius’ brother Uther burns with illicit passion for another man’s wife.

Beginning at the point where The Crystal Cave left off, The Hollow Hills traces Merlin’s fate-driven quest for the great sword of Emperor Magnus Maximus, known in Welsh legend as the hero Macsen Wledig. As the hermit of the Green Chapel in the Wild Forest in England’s Lake District, Merlin is tutor and guide to the young Arthur, born as a result of King Uther’s illicit tryst with Ygraine of Cornwall and being brought up in anonymity as the ward of Count Ector at Galava (modern Ambleside). Once again Merlin’s powers are called upon to bring the young Arthur to his destiny as Uther’s heir and successor – but not even Merlin can guard Arthur against the dark seed of destruction sown by Uther’s daughter Morgause.

The last in the trilogy, The Last Enchantment, tells the story of Merlin during Arthur’s reign. Having brought Arthur to the crown and the sword of his destiny, Merlin’s powers are fading and he is growing old and ill. Arthur’s two sisters Morgause and Morgan are brewing poison and treachery, and as the danger gathers Merlin seeks a pupil who will be able to take up his role as Arthur’s enchanter when he is gone. In the lovely Nimue Merlin finds his heart’s desire and recognises her as an enchantress with powers as great as his own. But how is she connected with Merlin’s foreknowledge of his own fate, entombed alive in his own cave in the hollow hill?

The trilogy is beautifully written in limpid prose. Landscape, wildlife and the changing seasons are especially well conveyed in vivid descriptive detail, bringing the world fully to life. The author says in the Note to The Crystal Cave that all the places described are authentic. There is no equivalent statement in the Notes to the other two novels, so I am not certain whether the same philosophy was carried throughout the series. Some of them can be pinpointed on a map, such as the Roman forts in the Aire Gap, while the site of the Green Chapel seems to be somewhere near Grasmere in the English Lake District but I wouldn’t like to say exactly where.

A series of novels with Merlin as the central character is always likely to contain magic, and sure enough there are some fantastical elements. Merlin has magic that works, can call fire from the air, can see events far removed in time and place, and fate or destiny dictates some episodes that would otherwise be outrageous coincidences. An interesting feature, perhaps connected with the importance of fate as a driver of events, is that Merlin’s magic is not entirely under his control. Whatever its nature, his power ebbs and flows, and Merlin interprets this as showing that he is being used as a tool by the god. God, singular, in Merlin’s world view. He accepts and honours numerous religions and deities, but believes, “All the gods are one God.”

The characters are complex and interesting, rarely either entirely bad or entirely good. Good people do bad things, and even the evil Morgause is accorded some measure of understanding for her actions. Merlin himself is an attractive character, which is just as well since the trilogy is narrated by him in first person and so the reader is perforce in Merlin’s company throughout. I often find first-person narratives frustrating, restricted as they are to a single character’s experiences and values. Fortunately Merlin is observant, curious, tolerant, a traveller in both body and mind, ever eager for new knowledge whatever its source, and his second sight allows him to recount events beyond his own experience. This has the effect of widening the scope of the narrative and allowing the story to unfold on a broader canvas than might otherwise be the case.

Most readers will, I would guess, be familiar with the Arthur legend in general terms before reading the trilogy. In a way this perhaps mirrors the experience of the storytellers of old – a Welsh bard getting up to recount The Dream of Macsen Wledig or an English scop reciting Beowulf must have recognised that most of the audience already knew the ending. Some stories seem to have an indefinable narrative life that makes them absorbing even when you know the ending, and the Merlin trilogy manages to achieve that. At least it did for me – the episode of the entry into Tintagel and subsequent escape at the end of The Crystal Cave remains gripping no matter how many times I read it, even when I know perfectly well what happens to everyone involved.

The starting point for the trilogy was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regium Brittaniae), according to the Author’s Note to The Crystal Cave. This immediately gives you fair warning not to get pedantic about historical accuracy (insofar as there is any such thing in an era with so few sources and so few facts as post-Roman Britain). Geoffrey’s tale has a cheerfully cavalier approach to history. The author describes Geoffrey as a “master of romance” (with which I would agree), and says of his book, “...he produced a long, racy hotch-potch of “history” [...] arranging his facts to suit his story, and when he got short of facts (which was on every page), inventing them out of the whole cloth. Historically speaking, the Historia Regium Brittaniae is appalling, but as a story it is tremendous stuff.” In the note to The Hollow Hills, she quotes Geoffrey Ashe and goes on to say, “.... any given episode of my story can be ‘taken as fact or imagination or religious allegory or all three at once’. In this, if in nothing else, it is wholly true to its time.” The trilogy is best read in that spirit.

The novels can be read independently but work better if read in order. I found The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills to be the most compelling. The Last Enchantment did not work so well for me. This may be because The Last Enchantment deals with the period of Arthur’s reign around which many legends have accreted – the twelve battles, the Round Table, Guinevere’s abduction and alleged adultery, the massacre of the innocents, the theft of Arthur’s sword, Camelot, the Holy Grail, the Lady of the Lake, Merlin’s affair with Nimue, Merlin’s imprisonment, Arthur’s two sorceress sisters, Merlin’s madness in the Caledonian Forest, and so on. The Last Enchantment has to touch on all these, which makes it rather meandering. By contrast, The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills cover Merlin’s early life and Arthur’s boyhood, which have far less legendary material attached and consequently allow a freer rein for the author’s imagination.

Enthralling retelling of the Arthur legend from Merlin’s point of view.

Has anyone else read this?

Pendragon, by Stephen Lawhead. Book review.

Edition reviewed: Lion, 1994, ISBN 0-7459-2763-7

Narrated by Merlin (Myrddin Emrys), this is Book 4 of a five-part fantasy retelling of some of the King Arthur legends. The setting shares the geography of Britain and Ireland some time after the end of Roman government, but as there is a colony of refugees from Atlantis living at Glastonbury I think it’s best regarded as a parallel universe sharing some geography and place names, rather than as a depiction of historical post-Roman Britain.

Arthur is brought up in the north, in the area around what is now Edinburgh and Lothian, and the Battle of Badon (Baedun in the novel) is apparently set in the same sort of area. Apart from a lengthy description of a stag hunt during Arthur’s childhood, the story effectively starts shortly after Baedun when Arthur goes to Londinium to be crowned High King of Britain. Gwenhwyfar, an Irish warrior princess, comes to Londinium to claim him as her husband and they are married there on the same day. On a visit to Gwenhwyfar’s relatives in Ireland, Arthur and his companions fight a fearsome Vandal war host led by Amilcar, nicknamed Twrch Trwyth or the Black Boar. The Vandals are driven out of Ireland, only to land in Britain and burn their ships showing that they intend to stay. Merlin, Arthur and their allies from the kings of Britain and Ireland have to pursue Twrch Trwyth and his war host in a deadly chase, culminating in a single combat on which the future of Arthur’s kingdom depends.

Stephen Lawhead’s style reminds me of Tolkien in some ways, even down to having a rhyme of lore at the front of the book:

Ten rings there are, and nine gold torcs on the battlechiefs of old
Eight princely virtues, and seven sins for which a soul is sold
Six is the sum of earth and sky, of all things meek and bold
Five is the number of ships that sailed from Atlantis lost and cold
Four kings of the Westerlands were saved, three kingdoms now behold
Two came together in love and fear in Llyonesse stronghold
One world there is, one God, and one birth the Druid stars foretold

Make of the rhyme what you will. There are further parallels with Tolkien in the presence of other races of people who seem different from ordinary humans. Earlier volumes in the series told how refugees from Atlantis sailed to Britain and established a colony at Glastonbury, led by their king Avallach (The Fisher King) and his daughter Charis (The Lady of the Lake). Merlin is the son of Charis and the great bard Taliesin, gifted with mystical powers and long life, and is Arthur’s chief bard and advisor. The Atlantis refugees are known as the Fair Folk, and another race of people, the Hill Folk or the Little Dark Ones, live in secret places in the hills of the north. Merlin has links with both races, as well as with the human world. So the tale is firmly planted in the realm of fantasy.

The story itself moves at a pace best described as stately, punctuated by fast action sequences in battle or hunt. Sometimes the narrative flips into present tense for a page or two during an action sequence, which is quite effective at conveying a sense of tension and speed. Battle scenes are vividly drawn, particularly the climactic single combat that lasts for three chapters and yet doesn’t drag.

The device of borrowing the legendary boar hunt from Culhwch and Olwen and making it a metaphor for a military campaign, with the Vandal leader as the ‘boar’ Twrch Trwyth and his warbands as his ‘piglets’, is a neat idea. Animal motifs are a not uncommon feature of names, so a name with an animal element could easily have found its way into folklore. The stem Cuno-, meaning ‘Hound’, appears in numerous Brittonic personal names over a long period, including a Cuneglasus (Blue Hound) attacked by Gildas and a Cunobelin from the time of the Roman invasion. Gildas also refers to a place called ‘receptaculum ursi’ (stronghold of the bear) and describes Maglocunus as ‘insularis draco’ (dragon of the island), which might be either a title or an insult depending on one’s interpretation.

Merlin narrates the tale in first person throughout, though as Merlin is an observant and somewhat detached character with wide knowledge and a tendency to comment on events, it feels more like an omniscient narrative. Certainly I didn’t get the claustrophobic feeling of being confined inside one person’s head that I often get from first-person narrative. There’s a clear distinction between the good guys (Arthur and his supporters) and the bad guys (Arthur’s enemies), as one expects in fantasy. Some of Twrch Trwyth’s Vandal followers are allowed to see the error of their ways and surrender to Arthur, but there is absolutely no indication that Arthur could ever be wrong in any right-thinking person’s eyes. People who disagree with Arthur are either evil or misguided, and there’s no space for alternative viewpoints.

This may contribute to the impression of rather shallow characters, many of whom seem to be what John Baker describes as embodied traits. So Arthur is noble, Gwenhwyfar is brave, Cai and Bedwyr are loyal, Gwenhwyfar’s father Fergus is quarrelsome but lovable, Bishop Urbanus is corrupt, and so on. Merlin seems to have a little more complexity, perhaps because he is the narrator. Overall, the novel was an easy read but not a particularly involving one.

Fantasy retelling of some of the King Arthur legends mingled with the legend of Atlantis.

Has anyone else read it?

The Reign of Arthur: From History to Legend, by Christopher Gidlow. Book review

Edition reviewed: Sutton Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-7509-3418-2

“Arthur was a great king. He ruled a land of knights in armour, damsels in distress, dragons and derring-do, home of Merlin the Magician and Morgan le Fay. He was born in Tintagel, became king by a combination of sword, stone and sorcery, and ruled from the castle of Camelot. At his Round Table sat Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and Sir Galahad, seekers of the Holy Grail. Finally, in tragedy, the love of Lancelot and Guenevere brought down the whole kingdom, leaving Arthur sleeping in the Isle of Avalon.

Did this King Arthur really exist? Almost certainly not. He was defined by writers of romance fiction in the twelfth century and refined through the Middle Ages. He inhabited a fabulous world based on that of his medieval audience. It was in this form that Arthur was revived by the Victorians and entered the public imagination.

Could this fantastic king be based on historical reality?”

These paragraphs begin Christopher Gidlow’s book, and it is the latter question that he sets out to answer.

The first part of his book is a survey of the earliest historical sources to mention Arthur and/or his battles. Three sources mention Arthur by name, the Welsh heroic poem Y Gododdin, the Historia Brittonum, and the Annales Cambriae. Two of these, Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae, say that Arthur was the victorious commander at a battle named Badon, and two further sources, Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, mention the battle of Badon but do not mention the name Arthur. What do they actually say?

Y Gododdin mentions Arthur in a single stanza, comparing one of the poem’s fallen heroes to Arthur,

“He brought down black crows to feed before the wall
Of the city, though he was no Arthur.”

The dates of the battle being described and of the poem itself have been, and still are, the subject of much scholarly debate. Christopher Gidlow quotes linguistic analysis arguing that the oldest verses were composed in a language that pre-dates Old Welsh and thus dates to before the end of the 6th century AD, and these include the Arthur stanza. Arthur’s name is the rhyme for the name of the hero, so it is unlikely to have been added in at a later date. If one accepts this analysis, and I see no reason not to do so, a man named Arthur was considered a fitting comparison for a fallen warrior hero in the later sixth century. This would be consistent with a real historical Arthur, known to the poet and his intended audience, who had a successful military career before the poem was composed.

Historia Brittonum (sometimes called Nennius after the name attributed to its author in some – but not all – of the surviving versions of the text) says in its prologue that it was written in about 830 AD. Linguistic analysis similar to that mentioned above for Y Gododdin argues that some of its spellings for names and places are much older than its stated date of composition, and therefore that the writer was drawing on earlier written sources. Historia Brittonum is the source for the details of Arthur’s military career:

“Then Arthur along with the kings of Britain fought against them in those days, but Arthur himself was the military commander ["dux bellorum"]. His first battle was at the mouth of the river which is called Glein. His second, third, fourth, and fifth battles were above another river which is called Dubglas and is in the region of Linnuis. The sixth battle was above the river which is called Bassas. The seventh battle was in the forest of Celidon, that is Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth battle was at the fortress of Guinnion, in which Arthur carried the image of holy Mary ever virgin on his shoulders; and the pagans were put to flight on that day. And through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the power of the blessed Virgin Mary his mother there was great slaughter among them. The ninth battle was waged in the City of the Legion. The tenth battle was waged on the banks of a river which is called Tribruit. The eleventh battle was fought on the mountain which is called Agnet. The twelfth battle was on Mount Badon in which there fell in one day 960 men from one charge by Arthur; and no one struck them down except Arthur himself, and in all the wars he emerged as victor.”

Some of the battle locations can be identified with reasonable certainty, e.g. the ‘City of the Legion’ is referred to elsewhere in Historia Brittonum, in Annales Cambriae and by Bede, who helpfully tells us “which the English call Legacastir but the Britons more correctly call Carlegion”, and is probably Chester. Calidon is the Roman name Caledonia and presumably refers to somewhere in Scotland. Most of them are uncertain, and legions of enthusiasts have located them all over the country with varying degrees of plausibility. The most interesting thing about the list, as pointed out by Christopher Gidlow, is that it has no supernatural elements. Arthurian sceptics have used the line, “no one struck them down except Arthur himself” to dismiss the list as the mythical exploits of a superman, but I share Christopher Gidlow’s view that the phrase is more likely to reflect the common practice of referring to a victory as the general’s, taking the presence of his army for granted. If a modern writer says, “Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo”, we don’t imagine the two generals slugging it out in single combat, and there’s no particular reason to assume that the writer of Historia Brittonum did either. Historia Brittonum’s account is a prosaic description of the career of a successful military leader who won a lot of battles. For mythical and legendary elements, like dragons and a fatherless boy with the gift of prophecy, you have to look to the Historia’s description of Ambrosius Aurelianus, not to Arthur.

Annales Cambriae, ‘The Annals of Wales’ contain two entries referring to Arthur:

“516 The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were the victors.

537 The battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell.”

Christopher Gidlow argues that the dates are unlikely to be accurate, partly because the Annals are set out in numbered decades and several of the decades have 9 years or 11 years instead of 10, with obvious potential for miscounting, and partly because the AD dating system was an innovation of Bede in the early 8th century. Prior to Bede the conventional way to reckon dates was by regnal years (“In the seventh year of the reign of King So-and-so”), much as Rome reckoned dates by reference to the serving consuls. Bede makes reference to both systems, and records the dates of important events like major synods according to numerous regnal year systems in different kingdoms (e.g. the Synod of Hatfield was held, “in the tenth year of the reign of King Egfrid of the Northumbrians; in the sixth year of King Ethelfrid of the Mercians....”etc). No wonder Bede felt the system could do with being tidied up if all the kingdoms were to be unified in one church; it was probably a little like railway time replacing local time in Britain during the nineteenth century. So AD dates attributed to events that pre-date Bede are most likely to have been estimated by a post-Bede scholar writing down material from older sources or oral tradition, and their accuracy (or otherwise) is a matter of conjecture. The important point is that the Annales Cambriae mention Arthur’s major battle from Historia Brittonum, and 20 years later record his death in a different battle. Again, there is nothing especially unusual or legendary about the entries. They are similar in form to other entries in the Annales, and don’t contradict Historia Brittonum.

Gildas and Bede both refer to the battle of Badon, but do not name its commander. Both sources (they are so similar that Bede probably based his account on Gildas) say that after Hengist and Horsa defeated Vortigern, Ambrosius Aurelianus became the leader of the Britons and a period (length unspecified) of back-and-forth warfare began, which lasted up until the siege of Badon when the Britons won a resounding victory. If either source said explicitly that Ambrosius led the British side at Badon there would be a discrepancy with Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae, but neither does. There seems to be no reason why Arthur could not have been the military commander at the battle even if Ambrosius was still overall ‘leader’, or there may have been a change of leader during the warfare preceding Badon.

This leads Christopher Gidlow to a rather exasperated section on double standards, where he makes the point that the documentary evidence for Maelgwn Gwynedd (usually identified with the Mailcun mentioned in Historia Brittonum and the Maglocunus castigated by Gildas) is no stronger than that for a historical Arthur. He concludes, “Historians cannot have it both ways..... If Maelgwn Gwynedd can be accepted on a balance of probabilities, then so should Arthur”. I share this view - I don’t mind a historian arguing that Source X is unreliable and should be treated with caution or disregarded altogether, but it does look like cheating when the same author then uses bits of the same source to support a different theory.

Christopher Gidlow concludes the first part with a summary of plausible roles for the figure of Arthur as recorded in these early sources. Arthur could have been a sub-king of a small region that was part of one of the larger kingdoms; a king of one of the kingdoms whose dynasties did not last into the Middle Ages; a high king with power over more than one kingdom; a military leader employed as a Magister Militum by a post-Roman provincial governor or a high king. Any or all of these would fit with the scanty records in the early sources, and Christopher Gidlow makes the important point that they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The same man might have held different roles at different points in his life, or been different things to different people.

If one accepts that there was a military hero who led some or all of the British to victory against some or all of the Saxons in a battle at a place called Badon some time in the late 5th or early 6th century – which is not at all implausible – then one might as well accept the name given to him in the same sources and call him Arthur.

The second part of the book charts the development of the Arthur story in surviving Welsh medieval texts, notably the poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen, the stories of Culhwlch and Olwen and the Dream of Rhonabwy, the Triads, various Saints’ Lives, and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, which arguably is the text that shot Arthur to superstardom. In it, Christopher Gidlow shows how these later texts acquire the mythical trappings that have become so much a part of the Arthur story in the modern form summarised at the top of this post. He makes a convincing case for seeing the process as one by which legendary tales accreted around a historical figure, in the same way as Roman emperor Magnus Maximus became the subject of a dream legend in the Dream of Macsen Wledig, rather than one by which a pseudo-historical figure was invented out of folk tales.

What I chiefly liked about The Reign of Arthur was its approach of starting from the sources, setting out what they say in a reasonably logical order, and then putting together an interpretation. It makes a refreshing change from proposing a theory and then quoting sources to support it. I once tried assembling the Arthur sources in a similar fashion – though Christopher Gidlow has done it much more thoroughly than I could – and came to much the same conclusions as he has. Which is nice.

In common with much narrative non-fiction, the book doesn’t use footnotes to cite sources, which I find mildly annoying. However, the author does make an effort to say in the text where he got information from, which is very useful as it allows the reader to check the source material and decide whether to be convinced by the argument. For example, at one point he argues for a scribal error in Annales Cambriae to resolve a discrepancy with Bede over the date of the seventh-century battle of Chester (not the same as Arthur’s battle at the City of the Legion, though very possibly at a similar location). Because he quoted his sources, I could look up Bede’s description, and my reading is that Bede’s account can accommodate the Annales Cambriae date without needing to postulate a scribal error. So I disagree with the author on this point, but because I can see where it came from I can accept the rest of his argument. In fact, if anything I think my interpretation strengthens his point that the Annales can be regarded as a reasonably historical source. I find it much more convincing when I can follow the author’s logic like this.

A clear and scholarly survey of the historical source material for Arthur and its later development into legend.

Has anyone else read it? Or have an opinion on King Arthur?