Show full transcript 1:00 For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. 1:08 Tremphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. 1:13 Tremphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every 1:18 four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. 1:22 If your doctor decides that you can self-incheck tramfaya, proper training is required. 1:27 Tramfaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely 1:30 active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. 1:35 Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight 1:40 them and liver problems may occur. 1:42 Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. 1:45 Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. 1:50 Explore what's possible. 1:51 Ask your doctor about Tremfaya today. 1:53 Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more 1:57 or visit Tremfayeradio.com. 2:01 Observe the North American dad. 2:04 50s, great polo collection. 2:07 He enters his vehicle information on Carvana 2:09 and offer appears in minutes. 2:11 Remarkable. 2:13 He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, 2:16 dang, that's a good offer. 2:17 the highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle, no one called him boss. He's still 2:25 on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pick up fees may apply. 2:43 Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our 2:51 Lord Jesus into another place. And men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the Holy 2:58 cross. Yet I will not say that it shall be so, but rather I would say, here in this world 3:06 he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon the tomb this, Hic 3:12 Yaquet Arthurus, Rexquandam, Rexquay Futurus. Here lies Arthur, the once and future king. 3:25 The most stirring, the most haunting epitaph in all of English literature and arguably all 3:31 of English history. 3:33 So that comes at the end of the Morte d'Arthur, the great prose epic that was written by Thomas 3:38 Mallory during the Wars of the Roses. 3:41 So in 15th century England was being torn apart by fighting for the crown. 3:45 And Mallory's great work is talking about a mystery that has haunted the British 3:50 imagination, not necessarily just the English imagination, but the imagination of all the 3:55 people in these islands for a millennium or more. And Malra's epic Tom was called The 4:02 Death of Arthur, The Mortartha, for a very good reason. It was mourning a golden age that 4:09 had already passed into legend, wasn't it? 4:12 Yes, the golden age of the round table, a time when knights were at their boldest 4:18 and ladies were at their fairest and yet throughout Mallory's account of it, the knowledge that 4:26 the round table is going to end up broken and its knights piled up as corpses shadows the 4:35 entire story. And it's the death of Arthur or is it a death after he's received a mortal 4:42 wound from his son, Mordred, in the last battle that he will ever fight. This is what sets the seal 4:50 on the tragedy. But to repeat, is Arthur actually dead? This is the great mystery. And 4:58 Mallory's account of his fate, which you just read out, you know, it's, it's rich in tantalizing 5:06 ambiguities. Because on what basis are men saying that he shall come again? And why 5:13 on his tomb does it have that kind of enigmatic phrase, Rex for tourists, a 5:18 future king? And what does Mallory mean when he says that he personally 5:23 believes that in this world Arthur changed his life? I mean does that mean 5:28 that he thinks that he died? Or is he talking about Arthur's translation to 5:34 some other mysterious dimension, some mysterious realm. And I think it is an incredible passage, 5:41 because Mallory isn't endorsing this really quite widespread hope that Arthur will come again, 5:49 but nor is he rejecting it. And it's very eerie and very tantalising. And I think a huge part 5:55 about why the mystique of Arthur endures to this day. I don't know whether you agree. 5:59 I completely agree. I fell in love with the stories of King Arthur when I was very very young because I had a really sort of 6:06 basic children's version when I was probably five or six or something. 6:11 King Arthur was my gateway drug into history. 6:14 I, you know, my love of King Arthur and the stories of King Arthur predated any 6:18 historical interest that I had. And of course one of the things that people always love about King Arthur is this precisely this idea 6:24 that he's the once-in-future King, that he's 6:27 sleeping and will come again to save the people of Britain in 6:32 their hour of danger in that in that darkest hour. But that's 6:36 not unique to Arthur, is it? Lots of different cultures have 6:38 stories like this. So for example, Barbarossa, Frederick 6:43 Barbarossa, the German Emperor. Now he was a we know he was 6:48 real, which we don't necessarily know of Arthur. And 6:51 Frederick Barbarossa, third crusade, right? Yeah, he 6:53 drowns, I think in northern Syria, swept away on a river. And he is said to lie asleep with 7:02 his knights in this kind of mountain chain in Turingia. And brilliant details about this 7:09 legend that he sat at this stone table for so long that his red beard, so hence Barbarossa, 7:16 has sprouted and grown and the tendrils of it have woven their way through the stone of the 7:22 table. And there were ravens flying around the mountain top in which he is sitting. And when 7:30 these ravens stopped flying, so the story goes, he will emerge and he will save Germany and restore her 7:37 to her ancient greatness. And of course, we know who loved that story. It was the Nazis, 7:43 because that's why they gave Operation Barbarossa the name that they did, this idea of reclaiming 7:49 ancient greatness. 7:50 Indeed. 7:50 But then there's the last Roman emperor, the last true emperor of Rome. 7:55 So Constantine the 11th, so he falls in the siege of Constantinople, doesn't he? 8:00 But he's also not dead, am I wrong? 8:02 His body is never found, so it's, you know, there's a bit of a mystery there. 8:05 And so the story is that an angel appeared and turned him into marble and hid him in 8:10 a cave under the golden gate, one of the great gates that leads into Constantinople. 8:14 And it is said that in due course, he will awake and recapture Constantinople for Christ. 8:22 So that's something that is in the offing. 8:25 And then Dominic, one that you absolutely loved, because I remember you talking about it in 8:28 the series that we did in Portugal, is King Sebastian of Portugal, isn't that? 8:33 Yeah, Dom Sebastião. 8:35 Yeah. 8:35 So he was fighting in Morocco in the 16th century, 1578. 8:41 And he was very young and dashing. 8:42 I think he was in his early 20s. 8:44 wasn't he, 24 or something? And he disappeared. So that's a thrill. And again, the story in 8:51 Portugal is one day Dom Sebastião would return, you know, sort of riding through the fog to rescue 8:58 Portugal. Yeah, the early morning mist, isn't it? I think he will save Portugal. So obviously, 9:04 the idea of a kind of sleeping king hiding in a cave or something waiting to be summoned to 9:09 rescue his country is quite a common one. But that's just by way of saying that 9:13 none of these guys can compare for celebrity, international celebrity, with 9:19 Arthur. And this celebrity is just mad and huge and dates back to the Middle Ages. 9:27 So there was a guy around 1200 who was writing an introduction to a book of 9:31 Merlin's prophecies. We'll be coming to them in due course in this series. And 9:35 he said something on the lines of Arthur is famous everywhere. He's almost as famous in 9:40 Asia as he is in Britain. And I assume he's probably talking there about the Crusader 9:45 kingdoms. But I mean, he's the celebrity that Arthur has in the Middle Ages is absolutely 9:50 massive. And you see, you know, in medieval times, romances, folktales, the medieval equivalent 9:57 of fan conventions across the whole of Christendom, everybody is obsessed by it. 10:02 And it's fascinating that the oldest surviving sculptural portrait of Arthur and his knights 10:09 isn't British. 10:10 It appears on the north portal of the cathedral in Modena in northern Italy, dated to I think 10:17 around 1130. 10:19 And at almost the same time, you have a kind of mad story that is situating Arthur's sleeping 10:25 place, kind of not in Somerset or Scotland or anywhere in Britain. 10:30 person, but in Mount Etna. And this is revealed by Groom, who had been chasing a bishop's 10:38 runaway horse up the slopes of the volcano. And he'd gone into the volcano where he'd 10:43 found Arthur reclining on a couch. And the king tells this Groom that he'd been there 10:48 a long time suffering from wounds he had received during his last battle against 10:53 Mordred. I mean, no explanations about how he had ended up in Sicily. 10:58 You mentioned fan conventions. So people might have thought that was just a sort of random 11:03 throwaway remark. But there really are fan conventions. Are there effectively tournaments? 11:08 So there's one in Beirut, Crusaders 1223. 11:12 Cypress, it's the Lord of Beirut. I mean, such a great title. So it's in 1223. 11:19 And he stages this very trend-setting tournament in Cypress to mark the 11:24 nighting of his eldest son and the jousters dress up as knights from the 11:30 round table and this establishes a kind of European wide craze for Arthurian 11:37 cosplay and so you have these round table tournaments where everyone dresses 11:41 up as Lancelot or Gawain or Arthur or whatever and I guess it's a kind of 11:45 mixture of fighting and fancy dress so very like the Restless History Festival 11:49 that we stayed at Hampton Court this summer. I guess you'd say it's the 11:53 kind of the original pan-European kind of sporting institution, kind of the Medieval 11:59 Champions League. It's that kind of sense of a shared sport that people from across Christendom 12:06 can share in. 12:08 But unlike sport, the Arthurian romance or what becomes the Arthurian romance has a 12:13 kind of political and moral dimension. Does it not? A spiritual one even? 12:16 Yes. So very famously in 1312 there was this French poet called Jacques de Longuillon and he drew 12:24 up a list of the nine exemplars of chivalry and he chose three pagans to illustrate, you know, 12:31 the nobility of the classical world. Three Jews, so these are biblical heroes and three Christians 12:38 and together these constitute the nine worthy's and Arthur is the single British entry and he 12:44 is named as the first of the three Christian men. 12:47 So he is the greatest of the Christian worthies. 12:49 As you say, it's a measure not just of his fame, 12:52 but of his kind of moral stature. 12:55 And so I think it's unsurprising 12:58 that when the first printing press is introduced 13:01 in England in 1476, 13:04 so again, that's against the backdrop 13:05 of the Wars of the Roses, 13:07 the merchant responsible for it very rapidly 13:10 is looking around for something 13:12 to publish about King Arthur. And this publisher is a guy called William Caxton. And he is 13:17 a top entrepreneur. I mean, publishing is just one of the many irons that he has in 13:22 the fire. And he has a very keen sense of what the public wants. And so he comes across 13:26 this manuscript called the Morte d'Arthur, a posthumous manuscript left by a knight 13:32 called Thomas Mallory, who's who's since died. And he reads it and he says, Oh, 13:36 this is brilliant. We've got to we've got to publish this. And so because Mallory 13:40 is already dead. Caxton can essentially do what he like with it. He can trim it, edit it, 13:45 mark it as he wants. And he does a tremendous job. And the result is a massive bestseller. 13:53 And I think the more D'Arthur is the book more than anything else that fixes for the English 13:59 speaking world, the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as a kind of 14:04 single sweeping narrative from the birth of Arthur, in fact, maybe even before the birth of 14:09 author, right the way up to the mystery of his end. And I'm guessing that the book that 14:14 you read as a child is derived from it. Certainly the books that I read were. 14:18 So I had multiple ones. I'll tell you one that I had. It was by Antonia Fraser. It was 14:23 the first book I think that she ever wrote. She was a very young woman. It was brilliant. 14:29 I actually ended up corresponding with her about it a few years ago. 14:32 Oh, I read the Roger Lancelin Green one, which had kind of wonderful woodcuts. 14:36 Oh, that was very good. 14:37 So that was basically Mallory but it had bits from other romances as well. They were all great. 14:42 Anyway, Mallory is tremendous. Mallory is at the back of all of this. You can't tell this story 14:46 without Mallory. Yeah. You know, if you think of all the novels that are written about Arthur, 14:51 all the kind of the TV series, the films, Excalibur, all that kind of stuff, basically 14:57 it is Mallory that is lying behind them all. Yeah. Not just things to ostensibly about 15:02 King Arthur. But I mean, Arthur is at the heart of Harry Potter and his wand, Luke Skywalker 15:09 and his lightsaber, all of those kinds of things. I mean, the writers of these things 15:13 themselves often say King Arthur is at the root of them, Aragorn with the sword that was broken. 15:17 There's this wonderful comment by Tom Shippey that the Arthurian legends are the most enduring 15:21 legacy of the Middle Ages. You know, Tom Shippey, the great writer about Tolkien. 15:25 I mean, I think that's not untrue, because I would say that people who don't have a 15:30 specialized interest in medieval history say will be more familiar with the sword in the stone or Camelot or the Holy Grail 15:38 Then they're likely to be with the names of kings who actually ruled in the Middle Ages 15:42 Of course, and there are two reasons why it's so interesting to us doing it history show 15:47 I guess now number one. I mean casting himself mentioned this in the preface, didn't he? 15:51 He said basically why I want to publish a history of the said noble king and conqueror King Arthur is to show 15:57 that he existed. 15:59 And there are people out there, 16:02 there are haters, losers, 16:04 who say that King Arthur did not exist 16:06 and all such books as to be made of him be 16:08 but feigned and fables. 16:10 And of course, this is the issue 16:12 that fascinates so many people to this day, right? 16:14 In the 2020s. 16:16 Was there a King Arthur? 16:17 Who was he? 16:18 Was he Ambrosius or really Arnaus or whatever? 16:21 Was he some warlord? 16:23 I mean, that is, I mean, 16:24 everybody is fascinated by that. 16:26 even surely even the most desiccated academic working on Anglo-Saxon England or the fall 16:32 of the Roman Empire or something. I mean, it is amazing when you look at books written by academics 16:37 in that period for the general market, they all have the world of Arthur, the age of Arthur, 16:43 whatever. And then they'll say, we don't know anything about him, but they put Arthur on the 16:47 cover, which I think is the measure of that. And we will be trying to answer the question 16:51 of whether Arthur existed, you know, who was he, who might he have been in due course in the last 16:58 episode of the series. But I think before we come to the question of who the historical Arthur 17:02 might have been, it is reasonable to concentrate on the legends, because I think it is these 17:08 much more than what, you know, some historical Arthur might have been getting up to in the 17:13 sixth century or whatever, which actually makes him such a significant topic of historical 17:18 Enquiry, because without the legends, to be honest, I mean, who would care? Who would care about this 17:22 otherwise obscure figure who might not even have existed? And again, just to emphasize how madly 17:30 popular the stories of Arthur were across Christendom. So around 1200, again, there's this French 17:36 poet, French poets are obsessed by Arthur, and this guy's called Jean Baudel, and he referred 17:41 to these stories as the matter of Britain. There was also the matter of France, which 17:45 of the stories of Charlemagne, there was the matters of Rome, which is kind of classical stories. 17:49 But the matter of Britain was the real obsession of people in medieval Christendom. And it's a 17:56 year of wide addiction. And so this is the second reason in his introduction that Caxton gives for 18:02 saying why he wants to publish the Morte d'Arthur. Namely, the d'Arthur, and I quote, 18:07 is more spoken of beyond the sea, more books made of his noble acts than there be in England, 18:12 as well in Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Greek as in French. 18:17 And he might have added in Latin, in Welsh, Cornish, German, 18:21 Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, Norse, Swedish, Icelandic, 18:25 Hebrew and Ruthenian. 18:26 The only Slavic language into which the stories of Arthur were translated. 18:31 But apparently they were massive in Ruthenia. 18:33 It's great to get the Ruthenians on the show. 18:34 And essentially, in medieval literature, 18:37 there is no other theme that can compare for popularity with it. 18:42 And so I think before we come to the, you know, the historical Arthur, the author of 18:47 Early Medieval Britain, let's have a look at the Arthur of Legend. And so our next two episodes 18:53 we'll be looking at Sir Lancelot first and Guinevere and then Merlin. And people may be 19:01 wondering, what about the Holy Grail? We have actually already covered that. And if you want 19:05 to listen to that. It is episode 346. But today, Dominic, we are looking at the last battle, 19:13 the wounding of Arthur, the mystery of what happened to him. Did he die? Was he translated 19:19 to a mysterious realm? Will he come again? 19:24 Okay. And these have, of course, drawn lots of different traditions and wellsprings. And 19:32 But as we already said, Mallory is the center of this, Mallory is the heart of it, the Mort 19:38 D'Arthur. 19:39 It's his account that is informed so many of the Hollywood films in the 20th and 21st 19:44 century retelling. 19:46 So it's Mallory that actually, even if people haven't read Mallory, he's there in your 19:52 head whether you know it or not. 19:53 So let's start with Mallory and what he tells us about Arthur, the Arthur in his 19:59 great tale. 19:59 So, if you've seen The Sword and the Stone, even if you've seen the Disney cartoon of The 20:05 Sword and the Stone, you will know that Arthur grew up in obscurity, but he was in fact the 20:10 true-born King of Britain, and he grew up under the tutors rather like Harry Potter or Luke 20:15 Skywalker or all these characters. 20:17 Luke Skywalker with Obi-Wan Kenobi. 20:18 Luke Skywalker with Obi-Wan Kenobi is absolutely the one, and in fact Obi-Wan Kenobi is 20:23 referred to in the first film as a wizard, as an old wizard. 20:26 Anyway, he grows up under Merlin, doesn't he? And Merlin becomes his advisor after he has pulled 20:32 the sword from the stone and therefore demonstrated that he is the rightful King of Britain. 20:37 And it is Merlin who helps him to defeat those who doubt his legitimacy. And it is Merlin who 20:43 famously helps him to source a magical sword. So to quote Mallory, they rode till they came 20:50 to a lake that was a fair water and broad. And in the midst, Arthur was aware of an arm 20:55 clothed in white Samite that held a fair sword in that hand. And he also sees a 21:01 damsel, again quote Mallory, going upon the lake, which basically means walking. 21:07 So very mysterious. And Merlin reveals to Arthur who this woman is. She is the 21:13 lady of the lake who dwells in a rock beneath the lake in as fair a palace 21:18 as any on earth. And the lady of the lake gives Arthur a sword and this 21:22 sword is of course Excalibur and this is the episode that prompts the famous 21:28 comment in Monty Python the Holy Grail about what is it women in ponds handing 21:33 out swords is no basis for government. I disagree. I mean I think looking at the 21:38 absolute shower we've had over the past few years I think this would be an 21:41 excellent way of getting a good leader and Arthur is going to be an 21:46 absolutely tremendous king and it's not just Excalibur that the lady of the 21:52 Lake gives to Arthur as a marker of this. She also gives him a scabbard, which Merlin 21:56 tells Arthur is worth much more than Excalibur, because whoever wears it shall lose no blood 22:02 be he never so wounded. The whole episode is incredibly eerie. The Lady of the Lake 22:07 is a very mysterious figure in the Mortarther, so at one point she's actually killed by 22:11 a knight of the Round Table, but before you know it, she's back on the scene 22:15 and you know, has she been resurrected? Are there multiple ladies of the Lake? 22:19 do they kind of share the title? Unclear. And she keeps shimmering in and out of view throughout 22:25 the Morte d'Arthur. And this sense in the Morte d'Arthur that women are a very mysterious presence 22:34 on the margins of what the men at the court of Arthur are doing is an absolute constant. 22:42 And alongside the Lady of the Lake, you have another very powerful and uncanny woman to whom 22:48 and we're introduced very early on by Mallory. 22:52 And this is Arthur's half-sister, Morgan Le Fay, 22:55 another kind of very famous name in Arthurian myth. 22:59 So she's Arthur's half-sister. 23:00 She'd been sent to a nunnery as a child 23:03 where she'd learnt necromancy. 23:05 It's not entirely clear how. 23:07 She is as fair a lady as any might be. 23:10 And she is consumed by an abiding hatred for Arthur, 23:14 which is never explained, 23:16 but she's the kind of, I suppose, the ultimate nightmare elder sister, maybe about the whole of 23:22 English literature. Right the way through the Malk D'Arthur, she's constantly scheming to have Arthur 23:26 killed. And this is introduced very early on in the book. And her initial plot is that she's going 23:32 to steal Excalibur and the Scabbard, which she does. And she then gives them to her lover, 23:38 who is a knight called Acheleon. And Morgan then magics up exact replicas of Excalibur 23:44 and the scabbard, which he kind of plants in Arthur's chambers so that he doesn't know that the 23:49 real ones have been stolen. And then Akelon and Arthur have a battle. Arthur is startled to find 23:56 that even though he seems to be wearing this magical scabbard, he's losing loads of blood. 24:00 The wounds are proving serious to him. But fortunately, the lady of the lake is on the 24:05 scene. And she comes to his rescue by alerting him to what Morgan has done, the trick that 24:11 Morgan has pulled. And so Arthur then grapples with Acheleon, wrestles the real Excalibur out of 24:17 Acheleon's hands, kills him and gets back not just Excalibur but also the magical Scabbard as well, 24:24 which is the real prize. But Morgan, she's not a girl to give up, let's put it like that. 24:31 So she promptly steals the Scabbard a second time and she goes out and she just chucks it in 24:36 lake. And that's it. It's just kind of imperious malevolence and spite of an absolutely transcendent 24:44 order. And so from this point on, Excalibur is in the hand of Arthur, but he doesn't have the 24:49 Scabbard. And so he can bleed. And so the kind of intimation of his mortality is set up right 24:56 from the very beginning. And there are other sisters, aren't there? Quite a lot of versions 25:01 actually of Arthur, especially for children. The sisters were all conflated into one. So 25:05 they're basically all conflated into Morgan LaFaye, who is the best known. But actually, 25:10 in the original, there is another sister called Morgore's, and she's a nightmare. 25:14 So she's married to Lot, who is the king of Orkney, and they've had four sons, and the 25:20 eldest of these is Gawain, who will go on to become, with Lancelot, the greatest of 25:25 Arthur's knights. And then you have Gehrys, Agrivene, and the baby of the family is 25:30 Gareth, who has beautiful hands. And shortly after Arthur has come to power, Lott not realising 25:37 who Arthur is and what the relationship is between Arthur and Morgore's, sends Morgore's 25:43 to go and spy on him at Arthur's court. And to quote Mallory, all this time King Arthur knew 25:49 not King Lott's wife was his sister. And basically, if you read that in a medieval folk tale, 25:55 well, you know what's coming. And so, inevitably, this being the kind of story it is, Arthur 26:02 ends up sleeping with Morgawes, and just as inevitably she ends up pregnant. And again, 26:07 I'm not sure that this is the kind of detail that tended to feature in the children's 26:12 accounts of the Arthurian legends that I read. 26:14 No, I don't remember this at all. 26:15 And Merlin, far from being sympathetic when this is revealed, what Arthur has done, 26:21 is very blunt about what this involuntary act of incest pertains. 26:26 You have done a thing that God is displeased with you for you have lain by your sister 26:30 and on her you have begotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm. 26:36 And the name of this child, once he is born on May Day, is Mordred. 26:43 Right. The great villain of the story is. And Arthur's kind of arch enemy. 26:48 I mean, talking of villainy, it has to be said that Arthur does not pet behave well towards 26:52 this little baby who is, after all, his son. 26:55 So when he's told that baby Mordred has been born, he has all the children begotten of 27:00 lords and born of ladies on Mayday rounded up, put on a boat and set adrift on the sea. 27:06 So basically it's a kind of marine take on King Herod killing the innocents of Bethlehem. 27:12 And the ship is wrecked and all the babies are killed. 27:16 They're all drowned, except for Maudred, who somehow survives and is restored to his mother, 27:24 Mughals, and then raised by her with his four elder brothers. So he is now the fifth of Mughals' 27:30 five sons. And Mallory typically doesn't explain how this happens. It's just kind of obedient to 27:36 the internal logic of the story. And you just have to kind of roll with it. And equally puzzling 27:41 is that when in due course, Mordred has grown up and, you know, he's attained manhood, he's become 27:47 a knight. He goes to Arthur's court with his four brothers and Arthur, you know, acknowledges him 27:55 as his son and doesn't seem to have any issue whatsoever. It's like he's completely forgotten 27:59 Merlin's prophecy. And Mordred is, you know, this guy who Merlin has said, oh, he's absolutely 28:05 troubled, he's going to destroy you. He becomes the knight of the round table. He's not, 28:09 he's not a famous knight, he's not a star, he doesn't kind of win any famous quests. But he 28:16 is clearly a ticking time bomb because basically he's a very malicious, vengeful man. And it's plain 28:23 that, you know, he is trouble. And in due course, this is exactly what turns out to be the case. 28:29 Because in the final book of the Mortartha, after we've had all these kind of glorious stories 28:34 of the adventures, the quests and so on. Mordred's moment finally comes, and what gives him his 28:40 opportunity is that his father, King Arthur, has left Britain across the Channel and is campaigning 28:47 on the continent. And madly, bearing in mind the prophecy that Merlin had given him, Arthur had 28:55 made Mordred regent in his absence. And while Arthur is away in France, Mordred starts spreading 29:04 fake news. He says Arthur is dead and then to quote Mallory he made a parliament and called 29:09 the lords together and there he made them to choose him king and so he was crowned Canterbury. 29:15 And the news is brought to Arthur. He returns. He forces a landing. 29:19 Mordred tries to oppose him. There's a great battle at Dover. Mordred loses and retreats. 29:24 Then there's a second battle again. Arthur wins and this is fought at Barham Down just 29:28 south of Canterbury. But Mordred has, he's kept his army together, he's retreated towards 29:35 Wiltshire and the Salisbury area. Oh, brilliant, to have the Salisbury area back on the show. 29:39 And so it was assigned to betwixt King Arthur and Sir Mordred that they should meet upon a down 29:44 beside Salisbury, so Salisbury plain. And these negotiations are held between the father and 29:49 the son, and they seem to be going very well. The rightful king, the would-be usurper, 29:53 it seems that they're going to arrive at terms. And wine was fetched and they drank 29:57 together. But then there is disaster. And this I always remember incredibly vividly from the 30:03 digital accounts that I read. So the knights on the two sides are drawn up on opposite sides of 30:09 this plane. And they're waiting as Arthur and Mordred kind of bury the hatchet. And while they're 30:15 waiting, an adder emerges from a Heathbush. And it stings one of the knights on his heel. 30:22 and the knight draws his sword to slay the adder. 30:26 And when the knights on both sides, 30:29 so the two armies drawn up facing each other, 30:32 when they see this glinting of the sword in the sunlight, 30:35 they all draw their swords in turn, 30:38 and then the two armies, Arthur's army, Mordred's army, 30:42 descend on one another, 30:44 and Mallory writes, 30:45 never was there seen a more doleful battle in no Christian land. 30:50 Righty, well the stage is set for that final showdown between Arthur and Mordred, so after 30:55 the break we will turn to the last battle, we'll find out what happens to Excalibur and 31:01 we will find out the truth behind Arthur's final journey to Avalon. 31:09 This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. 31:15 Now history's biggest leaps, many of them started as hard questions that people didn't 31:22 one asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that Tom at the end of the 15th century. 31:26 And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the 31:31 West? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer 31:35 Christopher Columbus, great pioneering voyage of discovery. And it is of course the Americas. 31:40 So your anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why anthropic is 31:45 founded on one hard question above all. 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So all day long the noise of battle rolled 33:29 among the mountains by the winter sea and that of course is Alfred Lord Tennyson. 33:35 So that's his first adaptation of the Mortarther and the Victorians adored 33:41 Arthur. They loved everything to do with knights and chivalry the Middle Ages 33:45 and Mallory. Tennyson however, he would disappoint you Tom. He describes 33:51 this battle as having taken place among the mountains by the winter sea now 33:55 I've been to Wiltshire in the Salisbury area and I don't recall any mountains or 33:59 any or is there any sea no it's it's very poor from Tennyson very sad he's 34:06 erasing Salisbury from the from the narrative but I mean generally there 34:12 is a good deal of confusion about where this last battle was fought as 34:15 we will see there are a kind of a number of various candidates but 34:19 But Mallory, Mallory's saying it's on Salisbury Plain. 34:22 So let's go with that. 34:23 And he also tells us that it lasted all day 34:25 and never stinted till the noble knights 34:28 were laid to the cold earth. 34:30 And by nightfall, 100,000 men are dead 34:33 and only two knights off the round table are left. 34:36 And one of these is Sir Lucan, 34:40 who is described by Mallory as being Arthur's butler, 34:44 which might conjure up a kind of slight down to nabby sense. 34:47 I mean, basically, he's the guy in charge of the king's table. 34:52 And the other guy who's survived is Luke's brother, Sebedivir. 34:57 So these are the only guys from the whole of the round table who have survived. 35:01 And Arthur is distraught, and he's mourning the slaughter. 35:04 And then looking around, he sees Sir Mordred leaning upon his sword among a great heap of 35:09 dead men. And he picks up his spear. And this is a tremendous detail, 35:15 which again, I don't think featured in the children's books. 35:17 The spear is called Ron. It's called Ron called Ron 35:23 Yeah, so 35:25 Some people haven't had previous episodes will think you just had a stroke at that point 35:29 I should explain that what Tom is doing. It's almost retroquiting Arthur is holding Ron 35:34 Former governor of California in the United States president mr. Reagan 35:38 Mortared mortared charges Ron and Arthur skewers him with Ron. So 35:45 And to quote Mallory, when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death's wound he thrust himself 35:49 with the might that he had up to the burr of King Arthur Spear and right so he smote his 35:55 father King Arthur. And Dominic there's a famous illustration by Arthur Rackham which he did in 36:00 1917 so amid the carnage of the of the First World War and it shows exactly the scene and 36:08 you have crows wheeling overhead and the battle scene is like the Battle of the 36:14 Somme or something or actually it's the climax of John Borman's brilliant film 36:19 Excalibur only in that it's the other way around. It's Mordred who's holding 36:22 the spear I think in that and it's Arthur who works his way down the length 36:25 of the spear. Anyway kind of terrible moment. So Mordred falls down dead 36:29 and Arthur is left mortally wounded by this last fight and Luke and the 36:35 butler, as a butler does, tries to help Arthur pick him up and move him. But unfortunately he 36:42 dies after part of his guts fell out of his body. So that's the end of Lucan. I mean, not a good way 36:48 to go. And so of all Arthur's knights, now the only one left to Arthur is Subedivir. And so Arthur 36:55 orders him to take Excalibur and go with it to a nearby lake and to throw the sword out 37:03 into the water. And Bedaphir takes a sword as he's been ordered, and he goes down to where the lake is. 37:10 But then he looks at the sword, and he thinks this is Excalibur. I mean, you know, it's so beautiful, 37:15 it's so rich, it's so glorious. Surely, it's time will come again. And so rather than throw it 37:20 away, he hides it. And he then rides back to Arthur, and he says, Well, I've got rid of the 37:24 sword. And Arthur says, Okay, if you did, what did you see? And Bedaphir answers nothing 37:29 but waves and winds and Arthur is furious and tells him that he is lying and then orders him to 37:37 again to go and throw the sword into the lake. But again Bedavir can't bear to dispose of it. 37:43 And again he lies to Arthur and again Arthur who is now you know absolutely furious orders him to 37:50 go and throw the sword out into the lake and this time Bedavir does obey and he throws the 37:57 sword out as far into the water as he can, and a famous famous 38:02 moment, perhaps one of the most famous moments in the whole of 38:05 our theory and myth, there came an arm and a hand above the water 38:08 and took it and clutched it and shook it thrice and brandished, 38:13 and then vanished with the sword into the water. 38:16 Stuff of so many kind of 19th century paintings and stuff, 38:20 isn't it? I mean, 38:21 Yeah, in Excalibur, it looks ludicrous because the 38:24 special effects aren't up to it, but it is still such a 38:26 tremendous moment. I actually watched it before starting this 38:30 episode to get myself into the mood. I feel so stirred by it. 38:34 Yeah, well, we can tell. 38:35 Bedavir returns to Arthur and says, Yeah, okay, so I've seen 38:39 this, you know, this hand rise up and everything. So Arthur 38:41 knows that now that he's telling the truth. And then Arthur 38:44 says, you know, we've, we've delayed too long here. Help me 38:49 down to the side of the lake. So Bedavir does and leads him 38:53 down to the lake. And they're waiting for Arthur and they find a barge with many fair ladies in it, 38:59 all wearing black hoods. And among them are Morgan Le Fay and the lady of the lake. 39:06 And Arthur is placed in the barge and he lays his head on his sister's lap. And then the queen said, 39:13 ah, my brother, why have you tarried so long from me? And it's completely typical of Mallory 39:20 that he gives no explanation as to why Morgan LaFaye, who's spent the whole of the Mortarther 39:25 trying to kill Arthur, is now kind of mourning him, caring for him. And I think Mallory's 39:31 refusal to explain things that in a novel, you would expect to be explained is a massive part 39:37 of what the kind of the aura of mystery that surrounds the whole thing. And I think you 39:42 get the feeling with this that Morgan has kind of, she's reverted to a kind of older, 39:48 a stranger, a weird register, as though actually she is now in her true dimension, because her 39:56 true dimension are those margins that lie between life and death, and that is why she's come for him. 40:03 Well, there's one small point about that though. I remember that very vividly from the children's 40:07 books. I also remember all the stuff about Maudred and him welcoming Maudred to his cause, 40:10 even though Maudred's going to kill him. And I have to say, in all that time, 40:15 I mean, never struck me as weird because, you know, young readers just completely take that 40:19 they're like, well, fine, if that's the story, that's the story. And I wonder whether Malory's 40:23 listeners were the same. It's kind of a bit weird, but that's the story. 40:27 I think they were because and Malory himself, he that there is this internal logic, you know, 40:33 they're in the sources, that's what he's going to do with it. 40:35 Yeah, exactly. 40:36 And that's the power of it. It's it's incredibly haunting. And what is also haunting 40:42 is the fact that the barge now starts to pull away 40:46 and Bedavir is left alone on the, you know, on the shore 40:49 and he calls after his Lord and Arthur answers him 40:54 by revealing his destination. 40:56 And it's not a cave, it's not Mount Etna. 41:00 It is the Vale of Avileon. 41:03 And he is going to Avileon there to be healed 41:06 of his wound and Avileon of course is Avalon. 41:09 and a way he sails accompanied by the weeping of Morgan, the weeping of the 41:14 lady in the lake, or the other ladies. And here is how Tennyson, in his 41:20 unbelievably powerful and beautiful poem on the topic, how he 41:26 concludes this scene, long stood Sir Bedivere revolving many memories till 41:31 the hull looked one black dot against the verge of dawn and on the mirror the 41:37 wailing died away. I feel tears, manly tears rising to the eye. So lots to unpick here. 41:45 Is there a historical basis for this idea of this last battle, the veil of Avilion or Avalon? 41:51 And of course, the question about whether Arthur will come again, where that comes from. So let's 41:57 start with the last battle, this idea of a titanic showdown. Now, this is actually one 42:01 of the oldest facts about Arthur, isn't it? And has clearly a very, well, a potentially 42:08 some kind of factual basis. I mean, I know we'll come to all this. When does it come 42:12 from the idea of a last battle? 42:13 Well, it comes from Wales. And just to say, the rest of this series, there is going to 42:20 be so much Welsh history. 42:22 Too much, perhaps? 42:24 Fans of Welsh feminism is going to be a lot of Welsh women. 42:26 This is peak rest of history. 42:27 Basically, Welsh history, we have got it. So the mention of the last battle, it's originally 42:36 mentioned in a collection of annals, so details of what happens year on year out. And these are 42:42 called the annales cambriae, the annals of Wales. And it's possibly, in fact, I think probably the 42:50 second oldest source we have for Arthur. And it dates to the mid 10th century. And it's 42:55 chronological record of events beginning in AD 447 and the entry for 537 reads, 43:03 the battle of Camelon in which Arthur and Medroth, so that's Mordred, fell and there was 43:09 a great dying in Britain and Ireland. And it is predictably enigmatic because nothing about the 43:15 early sources for Arthur are self-evident. So it gives us no clue as to where Camelon might 43:22 have been. The literal meaning of it is crooked bank, so presumably it's by a river. I mean, 43:29 that would seem a kind of reasonable supposition, I think. And people will note that it doesn't 43:36 indicate actually who Medril was, or indeed who Arthur was, whether he was Arthur's ally 43:41 or enemy, and who if anyone won the battle, it just says that they both died in this battle. 43:46 But no doubt, Tom, this is Welsh history, it's only a Welsh source. 43:52 It's a Welsh tradition, whether it's Welsh history, I mean, we will see, 43:56 but it's a Welsh tradition and it definitely, it's in Welsh poetry dating probably a century 44:03 after this, so kind of mid-11th century, that we get the first illusions to a rivalry 44:08 between Arthur and Medrout. But the really decisive contribution is made by a writer 44:15 who we will be referring to a lot over the course of this series, and he is also a kind 44:22 of very Welsh figure because he takes his name from a Welsh town, and this is a 12th 44:27 century cleric called Geoffrey of Monmouth. And Geoffrey of Monmouth writes, the book 44:36 that kind of lights the touch paper of Arthur Mania. And it's a history of the Kings 44:42 of Britain that ranges from Brutus who is a Trojan who arrives in Britain and kills all the giants 44:48 and it goes all the way up to Athelstan so you know the Anglo-Saxon king in the 10th century. 44:55 And the star turn in this history is the first full length account of the reign of King Arthur 45:02 and it is impossible to overemphasize what a massive bestseller this book was and within a 45:10 generation of its appearance, it had swept the whole of Christendom. And it is this book 45:16 that basically inspires the the Europe wide obsession with Arthur. And over 200 copies 45:23 of the manuscript survive, which for a for a book that is not theological, not a translation 45:30 of a Latin classic is mad. There's no kind of secular text that that features in so 45:36 many manuscripts. And Geoffrey called his book a history, but I think it's fairer to describe 45:43 it as a fantasy. And he's basically the Tolkien, the JK Rowling of his day. He's an author from 45:50 Britain who creates this entire world of wonder and adventure that is so addictive, so readable, 45:58 that it makes him an international literary superstar. And it's Geoffrey in this book, 46:05 this history of the Kings of Britain who makes two crucial contributions to what would become 46:11 the canonical version of the last battle and Arthur's ultimate fate. 46:16 Well, when you say, when you say he makes these contributions, if you were being skeptical, you 46:20 would say he's making stuff, he's making loads of stuff up. Now is, yeah, well, 46:27 obviously the whole course of the series will be exploring whether Geoffrey of 46:31 Monmouth is basically inventing how to know where spoiler alert, he is making it up. I mean, 46:36 let's be upfront about that. He is making up loads and loads of stuff, not everything, 46:41 but he is making up a lot. So for example, it's Jeffrey Monmouth who creates the idea, 46:47 doesn't he, that Mordred and Arthur are related. He's trying to explain the relationship between 46:51 them. And but in this case, in Jeffrey, Mordred is Arthur's nephew, right? Not his son. 46:58 Yeah. But there's still a kind of blood relation there. It's Geoffrey who introduces Mordred as the 47:02 regent that Arthur leaves behind when he goes to the continent. It's Geoffrey who first develops 47:08 the theme of Mordred trying to steal Arthur's throne, Arthur returning to reclaim it, 47:13 and then the, you know, this great last battle. So this is the Battle of Camelon, 47:18 as mentioned in the Annals of Wales. And Geoffrey is much more specific about the 47:24 location of this battle than the annals of Wales had been. He says that it was fought 47:29 beside the river Camlam, so it's kind of riff on Camlan, and this is the river Camel in 47:35 Cornwall, and specifically at a place called Slaughter Bridge, which I visited it and 47:42 I have to say it's an absolutely lovely spot for a battle. You know, if you've 47:45 got to have your court wiped out, that's a great place to have it wiped out. And 47:50 And it features a sixth century memorial stone, so again the kind of right period, although 47:55 it has absolutely nothing to do with Arthur, so that's a shame, but it is the right period. 48:00 So there are other places that have been identified with Camelan. 48:05 It's the kind of detail that Arthurian scholars love to kind of explore. 48:10 So one very popular location is Cadbury Castle in Somerset, which stands beside the 48:17 River Cam. 48:18 That's not really a castle so much as a hill, right? 48:19 It's like an Iron Age hill fort, it's an Iron Age hill fort and we will be coming to this in part four. 48:26 So Capricastle fans, tune into that. There is a place called Kamlan in Gwynedd. 48:32 Maybe that's possible. I mean, it is called Kamlan. And then there is a place called Kambaglana, 48:36 which is Castle Steads on Hadrian's Wall and 48:40 the idea that Arthur Fort battles in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall is very popular again as we will be seeing in our 48:48 fourth episode. But it is reasonable, I think to say at this point, the search for the historical 48:54 author is basically like searching for a needle that may not exist in a haystack. So that is, 49:05 that is a problem with the sources. So we don't really know where Camelon was. It's 49:11 the honest truth, I think. And I don't think we ever will. 49:14 Although I want to tempt the listeners, we will of course be revealing all in the 49:17 final episode, so we will. For the purposes of this episode we don't know, but maybe we can 49:23 persuade Tom to pronounce a definitive verdict in episode four. What about the other thing that 49:27 Jeffrey contributes or indeed makes up? The Isle of Avalon, so we're really on. 49:31 Yes, so Jeffrey is definitely the guy who introduces Avalon into the mix. 49:35 Whether he makes it up from scratch, we will see. So Jeffrey writes in his history that 49:40 Arthur, our renowned king, was mortally wounded and carried off to the Isle of Avalon 49:45 so that his wounds might be attended to. And of course it is, you know, as so often very cryptic. 49:51 He doesn't say whether Arthur was healed of his mortal wounds. He doesn't say where the Isle of 49:55 Avalon was. So these are kind of twin mysteries that he's very happy to leave hanging. And the 50:01 fact that Jeffrey doesn't say where the Isle of Avalon is means that over the course of the 50:09 12th century, you know, this book has come out, it's going great guns, everyone's absolutely 50:13 obsessed by it and so obviously people do start to puzzle over where Avalon might be and this for 50:21 well for some people starts to present an irresistible opportunity. So let's move forward 50:28 from the publication of Jeffery's history in the late 1130s to 1184 so half a century on 50:34 and in this year a devastating fire breaks out at a 400 year old abbey at a place in Somerset 50:42 called Glastonbury. I wonder if we're being to Glastonbury. This abbey stands on elevated land 50:49 above the Somerset levels. So one of the reasons why it's always so muddy at Glastonbury at the 50:55 festival is because the whole area is naturally very wet. And back in the 12th century, the Somerset 51:02 levels are a kind of stretch of fends and marshes that for much of the year turns Glastonbury 51:09 into a kind of island. And so it's this kind of setting that Glastonbury has amid these 51:15 misty wetlands, which gives it a very haunting and otherworldly air. And wherever you have 51:23 a haunting and otherworldly air, you tend to have pilgrims arriving because it gives 51:27 you a sense of the, well, the sacral, I guess. 51:30 The monks at Glastonbury Abbey, they've got this very ancient church made of wood. 51:36 it's been a venerable center of pilgrimage. 51:39 And so the fact that it then burns down 51:41 is an absolute disaster because it's the oldest 51:43 and most sacred part of the abbey complex 51:46 that has gone up in flames. 51:47 And basically it removes their entire source of income. 51:50 So the monks desperately need to rebuild their abbey. 51:55 And if they're going to rebuild it, 51:56 then they need the money to do so. 51:58 And so they turn to the King of England 52:00 who at the time is Henry II, 52:02 the first Plantagenet King, 52:04 ruler of an empire that covers not just much of Britain but also half of 52:08 France and so he should have lots of money and sure enough Henry says yes 52:12 sure I'll give you some money but then unfortunately in 1189 Henry II dies and 52:17 is succeeded by his son Richard I, Richard the Lionheart and Richard the 52:22 Lionheart is he's not really into building abbeys but what he's really 52:25 into is crusades and so all this money that was going to go on repairing 52:29 this burnt abbey is now being spent on raising an army to go on the 52:33 third crusade. And so the monks are left out of pocket. They need a new source of income. 52:39 And then miraculously, Dominic, miraculously, in 1191, they find an alternative source of 52:48 income. And to be precise, they find the bones of an enormous man in a coffin that had 52:55 been hollowed out from an oak tree. There is a stone slab. And beneath this slab, 53:01 there is a cross made of lead and on the cross written in Latin are these fateful words. Here 53:07 lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the island of Avalon. It's great that the coffin has that 53:16 written out to eradicate any possible doubt and what a moment for it to, at the point 53:26 them, they needed money. Yeah, incredible stroke of luck. This is huge for them, right? I mean, 53:31 they can basically turn themselves into, well, one of the great tourist attractions in northwestern 53:38 Europe. Yeah. Firstly, they've got the bones of King Arthur, the most famous king in Europe. 53:43 And they have now successfully identified Glastonbury with the mysterious Island of Avalon. 53:48 So basically, you know, brilliant, open up your checkbooks, ka-ching. 53:54 So they can start using this to make Glastonbury a kind of massive tourist attraction, which is what they do. 54:00 But if it's massive for the monks of Glastonbury, it is also massive for the English monarchy, 54:05 because the kings of England can now appropriate Arthur and the stories that are told about him for their own purposes. 54:13 And the king who really recognizes the potential for this is Edward the First, so the hammer 54:20 of the Scots, but also the guy who conquers Wales. 54:23 And in 1278 on Easter Monday, Edward the First and his wife Eleanor of Castile, they come 54:29 to Glastonbury and they preside over the formal re-internment of Arthur and his queen 54:37 Guinevere, whose bones had been found in vertical commas by the monks lying beside the bones 54:44 of this colossal guy who the monks are saying is Arthur. Arthur and Guinevere are laid to rest in a 54:50 great black marble tomb that's been constructed before the high altar of the Abbey in Glastonbury 54:56 and Edward has wrapped Arthur's bones in silk and Eleanor has wrapped Guinevere's bones in silk. 55:03 And the propaganda value of this to Edward is immeasurable, because it helps him with 55:10 a problem that has been confronting his dynasty for almost a century. 55:15 And basically, Edward, you know, he rules by right of dissent from William the Conqueror. 55:20 The problem is, though, that he has lost Normandy. 55:24 His grandfather, King John, had lost it to the French King. 55:28 And so this means that Edward and his barons are now cut off from their ancestral homeland. 55:34 And in this context, tapping into the whole myth of Arthur is an absolute genius move, 55:39 because it enables Edward to cast himself as the heir of this kind of ancient glorious 55:44 king who had ruled not just England but a unified Britain, so Wales and Scotland as 55:54 well as England, and actually it's Wales when Edward comes to Glastonbury to rebury Arthur 56:01 and Guinevere that is uppermost in his mind. Because the previous year, so that's 1277, 56:07 Edward had led a massive expedition against Helüelen of Griffith, who as events will 56:15 turn out is going to be the last independent prince of Wales. And this invasion of Wales, 56:22 the conquest of Wales will culminate in 1282 with the death of Wellyn in an ambush and then 56:30 two years later in 1284 with Edward's official annexation of Wales. He is going to rule as 56:37 Wales's king from this point on. And so in this context, you can see absolutely how his 56:45 appropriation of these supposed bones of Arthur is a master stroke because it helps him by 56:50 by the fact that Arthur's been found, he's not going to come again, he's not waiting 56:55 to draw his sword and come to the rescue of the Welsh. He can be put in a tomb in Glastonbury 57:02 and it scotches this deeply held belief that the Welsh and the Cornish and the Bretons 57:07 have all had that Arthur isn't dead and that he's going to come again. And just to say 57:12 that this particular tradition, like the tradition about the last battle being fought 57:16 at Camelon is an authentically ancient one. And we know this because back in 1113, a group 57:25 of French clergymen from Lyon had come to England to try and raise money for a church, 57:30 and they'd gone to Cornwall. And while they were there, they got into a massive punch 57:34 up with a load of Cornish people who were very offended by one of these French clergymen 57:39 laughing at the idea that Arthur might come again. The French found this ridiculous. 57:45 as Cornish very offended, it's a big fight about it. 57:48 And we know from a poem written in the 10th century 57:51 in Wales that Arthur's grave was described as a wonder 57:56 and it's a wonder because it can't be found. 57:58 And if it can't be found, then again, 58:00 there's the hint of the suggestion 58:01 that maybe Arthur isn't in his grave. 58:04 And again, you have the sense, I think, 58:07 reaching back centuries before Edward burying 58:12 Arthur's supposed bones of Arthur as this kind of hero who is unbound by the limits of death. 58:19 But Edward's reburying has multiple political functions, doesn't it? Because on the one hand, 58:24 it's, as you say, dispelling once and for all the idea that there's a kind of Welsh hero who's 58:28 going to return. But at the same time, he's appropriating Arthur for an English monarchy, 58:34 like Ptolemy making off with the body, you know, the corpse of Alexander the Great. 58:38 Edward I is saying, I have Arthur. He is here. He is mine. And actually Arthur's ambition to rule, 58:46 Arthur's supposed ambition, Arthur ruled all Britain. Well, that's what Edward I wants to do. 58:52 Yeah. So he's conquered Wales, and then he goes off to Hammer the Scots. And he's consciously 58:57 framing himself as the heir of Arthur. And so the corollary of that is that the English 59:04 English king starts to appropriate Arthur as an English hero. And so you, Edward is staging 59:13 round table tournaments in Wales. Then maybe Edward I, maybe his grandson, Edward III physically 59:21 constructs a round table. 59:23 This is the round table in Winchester. 59:24 Yeah. So I think it gets repainted by Henry VIII, doesn't it? But it's definitely kind 59:29 of dates from the thirteenth century. 59:32 Listeners to the series that we did on the Hundred Years War may remember how important 59:36 orders of chivalry are to Edward III and to all the kind of English knights who were fighting 59:42 in the Hundred Years War. 59:44 This notion of themselves as the knights of a new Arthur crossing the sea as Arthur 59:50 and his knights had done is incredibly important in animating notions of English chivalry, 59:56 notions that England has a kind of romantic history that its kings can draw 60:04 on in wars with, you know, even the King of France, that the King of England can 60:09 go toe-to-toe with the King of France. And so by the time we get to Mallory, 60:13 Mallory, I mean, there's precious little welchness in Mallory's Mord Arthur, is there? 60:18 Yeah, it's all England. So the Sword in the Stone, the most famous story in 60:22 Mallory, it's framed, you know, the lettering on the stone reads, 60:26 Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is 60:29 right wise King born of all England. So not Britain, England. 60:33 So they found Arthur, they know that he went return, he's 60:36 buried at Glastonbury, and he's become an enormously important 60:39 sort of propaganda tool for the English monarchy. And yet, the 60:44 idea of his return, the idea that wants in the future King 60:47 Does not go away because it's still there in in Mallory 60:52 So why doesn't it go away if they know that he's dead? 60:55 Well, I think I think a possible clue to that is given actually in the very last sentence of the mortarther 61:01 And that tells us that I quote this book was ended the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the fourth 61:06 by Sir Thomas Mallory Knight and 61:10 this equates to 61:12 1469 or possibly the early months of 1470 which is a period of immense 61:17 and escalating political instability in England, because it's the build-up to a fresh spasm 61:26 of violence that will culminate in open war. And this is part of the English Civil War that is 61:35 known as the Wars of the Roses. So it's Lancaster against York. The emblem of Lancaster is the red 61:40 rose. The emblem of York is the white rose. And the Lancasteran king is Henry VI. He has 61:46 being deposed, locked up in the Tower of London by the Yorkist King, Edward IV, who has usurped 61:54 Henry VI's throne and is now claiming to rule England and has done so basically for 62:00 a decade. But fresh instability, Edward IV is going to be cast into exile for a few 62:06 months and then he'll come back, reclaim the throne and end up murdering Henry VI. 62:10 And so Mallory is finishing his book in the build-up to this kind of great, you know, convulsive 62:16 moment in the history of 15th century England. 62:19 And Mallory, in some sense, that is not entirely clear, seems to be implicated in the violence 62:26 of this period. 62:27 Unfortunately, the details are quite murky. 62:30 But we know from the evidence of the Mordartha itself that the author was writing 62:36 it in prison, because periodically throughout the Mordecai he is saying as much. There has been, 62:43 over the past century, quite a lot of scholarly disagreement as to which of the various Thomas 62:49 Mallories who were kind of kicking around in mid 15th century England, the Thomas Mallory who 62:54 wrote the Mordecai was. But I think nowadays the overwhelming consensus is that our Thomas 63:03 Mallory was a knight from Warwickshire, from Newbold revel. And this is a guy who from the court 63:12 records clearly did have a certain taste for trouble. And all of this is laid out in the landmark 63:21 study of the life and times of Sir Thomas Mallory, the title of the book, and it's by 63:26 PJC Field. And it came out I think about three decades ago, but it's still basically 63:31 pretty unchallenged in its conclusions that it is this guy. It's the night from New Bowl 63:36 Reveal. And in the 1450s, this particular Mallory was being kept in a range of prisons 63:42 in London. So the Marshall Sea, the Tower of London, Newgate Prison, and he's been 63:49 kept there by the government, which at this point is Lancastrian. Henry the Sixth is 63:52 on the throne. But then Edward IV comes to the throne, and between 1468 and 1470, 63:59 he is issuing four general pardons in succession, but in all of these four general pardons, Thomas 64:07 Mallory Knight is specifically excluded. And the measure of what a big deal this is, other 64:16 people who are excluded in this pardon include Henry VI and Margaret of Anjoux, his wife, 64:21 and Edward of the Prince of Wales, who is his son. So Mallory is being ranked among 64:25 they're basically, you know, the the royal, the the Lancastrian royal family. So it's presumably on 64:32 Edward IV's orders that Mallory was being kept in prison while he was writing The Morte d'Arthur. 64:37 So the mystery is that in the first decade, he seems to be, you know, he's in prison on the 64:42 orders of Henry VI, the Lancastrian. And then in the second decade, he's been kept 64:47 in prison on the orders of Edward IV, the Yorkist. And so there's a puzzle as to why 64:52 this would be. And the explanation that Field gives in his book is that Mallory's author is a 64:56 notably unsensorious person. And he proposes that Mallory's sympathies were aroused less by causes 65:03 than by individuals behaving chivalrously in difficult circumstances. So in other words, 65:09 he perhaps, he was anti-Lancastrian, and then he feels sorry for Henry VI, so he switches sides. 65:16 So he always surveyed as the underdog in such a way as to get himself arrested and incarcerated? 65:20 Well, you're sounding cynical, but I think that there is, you know, there is a certain 65:26 degree of evidence to back this up in the Mortarther itself. 65:28 So Mortarad obviously stages this coup against the rightful king in the Mortarther. 65:36 And I don't think you need to, you know, identify this coup against Arthur as somehow a kind 65:42 of allegory for the Wars of the Roses, the behavior of Edward IV against Henry VI 65:47 To recognise that Mallory's account of the civil war in the Mork D'Arthur is, I think, 65:56 clearly informed by the experience of civil war that England is going through in the 15th 66:04 century. 66:04 The wars of the roses and so on. 66:06 Yeah, that makes total sense. 66:07 I find that very plausible. 66:09 The details that we cited at the beginning of this episode of Mordred Lane came to 66:14 the throne. 66:14 He holds a parliament. 66:15 who know, he summons the commons, all this kind of stuff. 66:18 It's very 15th century. 66:20 It bears no relationship to what was going on 66:22 in the sixth century. 66:23 And Mordred laying siege to the Tower of London, 66:26 and Mallory describes him making many assaults 66:28 and throwing engines unto them and shooting great guns. 66:32 So, you know, that's amazing, 66:33 the kind of artillery in same time as the round table. 66:36 And Mallory writes that the people of England 66:39 swing this way and that in their loyalties. 66:41 So to Arthur, to Mordred, to Arthur, to Mordred. 66:45 And Mallory complains the people of England were so newfangled and newfangled in the middle ages means fond of novelty. 66:52 Yeah, changeable and fit-ish. 66:54 They're very changeable. 66:55 They no sooner have one leader than they want to get rid of him. 66:58 Yeah, like now, frankly. 66:59 Yeah. 67:00 And there's a very, you know, haunting descriptions of the last battle that, I mean, it has the faint hint of lived experience. 67:09 So after the last battle, the knights are lying in great tangles across the battlefield. 67:17 Looters steal out onto the field by moonlight to strip the dead of their belongings, 67:22 and Mallory writes, who that were not dead all out there, they slew them for their harness 67:26 and their riches. And I think the point he's making is that the collapse of Arthur's realm 67:31 into ruin, you know, it's not just Mordred's fault. Mordred has taken advantage of 67:39 a fickleness that he sees as being endemic to the English, he kind of laments it was the old custom and usages of this land and men say that we have this land have not yet lost that custom alas this is a great default of us Englishmen for there may nothing please us no term. 67:57 But you can see why he would be writing this in this context, right, in the late 15th century, 68:04 when it's extraordinarily turbulent, it's fun to read about, but presumably not tremendous 68:09 fun to have lived through, this period of chaotic leadership, Lancashire and then 68:15 Yorkist kings rising and falling, coups, plots, betrayals, battles. 68:21 So effectively, the Mort D'Arthur in that sense is not a neither a fiction nor a 68:25 historical record, so much as a kind of work of political commentary, almost a kind of mirror 68:30 to the woes of 15th century England. 68:33 Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the kind of the collapse of England from the glory days 68:37 of Henry V to the bloodletting of Tauton and Tewkesbury, I think, I mean, is it possible 68:42 to think that it isn't there in the back of Mallory's mind? And I think that for that reason, 68:48 then, you can understand that the notion that Arthur might come again and redeem his country 68:58 is something that would have had a peculiar resonance, and not just for Mallory, but for 69:03 everyone in England at the time. 69:05 I think today, people think that. 69:07 It's how people who present the rest as politics think about David Miliband. 69:11 Oh, God. 69:12 He's not dead. 69:13 Oh, Lordy. 69:13 He's only... 69:14 No. 69:14 He's not dead. 69:15 I mean, he may seem dead because he's so uninteresting, holding his banana like Excalibur. 69:22 One day you will return. 69:24 I mean, I kind of feel, you know, if Arthur's going to come back now, he's as good a time as any. 69:29 Absolutely, yeah. 69:30 So, that's the Mortarther's kind of 15th century mirror. 69:33 These are the origins in Malera's own lifetime, the politics of Malera's lifetime. 69:37 But there's so much more to explore, isn't there? 69:39 So we haven't yet really got into the round table and its nights. 69:46 and specifically the most well the most celebrated but also perhaps the most 69:53 controversial perhaps some would say the most overrated of all his nights and 69:58 that's Salant Salot. Salant Salot is not overrated Dominic. Salant Salot is 70:02 absolutely banging. He's a show pony. Anyway right well that's this is this is 70:06 setting up nicely the tension that will be simmering in the next episode as we 70:10 explore the origins of Solansalot, whether he was quite as heroic as he's cracked up to be, 70:16 and what on earth is going on with Lansalot and Guinevere, and why is Arthur not doing anything 70:21 about it. So if you want to find out about Solansalot, if you want the truth about Merlin, 70:27 and if you want us, if you want us the spectacle of Tom Holland throwing caution to the winds, 70:34 identifying the historical Arthur, explaining exactly where Camelot was, all of this, 70:39 It's solving a mystery that has perplexed great minds for hundreds of years. 70:44 That's going to come in the fourth episode. 70:47 If you'll remember the Restless History Club, so that is our very own roundtable of the best 70:52 and the brightest, some of the great people of the modern world. 70:56 They can hear those episodes right now. 70:58 You can join them. 71:00 And the way to do that is to go to therestlesshistory.com to stare the sword and the stone 71:06 in the face to draw the sword or alternatively to sign up to the club and give us your details. 71:13 And then you will get the, you will get those three episodes. You'll get your membership 71:18 on the round table and you'll get supplementary benefits in the form of the right to join 71:24 the quest for the Holy Grail of all the metaphors with which to try to shroud this 71:28 commercial offer. I think this is probably the most ill conceived and shambolic. Anyway,
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