Discover King Arthur: The Making Of The Legend Picturized By Nicholas J. Higham File Readable Copy

is an attempt to demolish the idea that there is an identifiable historical figure who is the 'Real King Arthur'.
It seems doomed to fail, Higham is not the first scholar to announce that the historical Arthur did not exist, Guy Halsall wrote a similar book in.


Its unlikely hell be the last,

Arthur has proven a hard idea to squash, Despite the critical mauling it received, John Morris The Age of Arthur is still for sale, and if Goodreads is anything to do by, still convincing readers that there was a historical figure as a point of origin for the stories.


Highams book is an encyclopedic refutation of the varied and various arguments for an Historical King Arthur.
He lines up the contenders: the Sarmatian Arthur, the Greek Arthur, the list of nominees with names sounding like Arthur or those whose names sound nothing at all like Arthur the if this, then this, and then that means weve found Arthur arguments, and one by one he knocks them over.


Highams conclusion is that

we can now agree to discount King Arthur as a real figure of the past, leaving him and his deeds to the smoke and highland mist of makebelieve and wishful thinking it is there that he properly belongs.
p.

As much as I agree with him, I distrust that first person plural which Higham is fond of using.
Reading the book is like being bludgeoned, very thoroughly and very carefully, It should settle the argument, But it wont. Ironically, even the blurb on the cover hedges its bets, Max Adams, identified as the author if 'In the Land of the Giants', is quoted: Rivetingbrings the historical Arthur to what may be his last decisive battle.
May be because, given the nature of the evidence, there is never going to be a final, irrefutable argument.


Higham has created his own trap, And it has two parts, The first is that early British/Post Roman/Early English history is a specialists field, There is little surviving evidence, and what there is has to be used carefully, The number of people on the planet who can evaluate the arguments about the dating of the Arthur reference in The Gododdin is very very small.
But as Guy Hallsal pointed out in a similar book, the experts have left the field,

Higham wants to reenter the discussion, But how can he do that The people who should read this book probably wont, The cult of the selfappointed expert and the ability to confuse looking stuff up and genuine research, which is not confined to Arthurian studies, means nothing will daunt those with the arrogance to think they can discover secrets the experts who spend their careers studying these things have missed.
People want to believe and those that dont understand

that belief has nothing to do with it, will not be deterred.


But I wonder if Higham really thinks that someone inspired by the Clive Owensfilm King Arthur which was advertised as The untold true story that inspired the legend, is going to read his detailed, painstaking deconstruction of the argument that Lucius Artorius Castus was the original Arthur pp

The other problem is that its almost impossible to prove a negative.
We can prove King Alfred or Lady Godiva existed, but we cant prove Arthur didnt, This means the onus of proof should be on those making the claims, Higham quotes Bertrand Russell:

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than the business of dogmatists to prove them.
This is, of course, a mistake, He illustrated the point by supposing the existence of a teapot in orbit around the sun that is too small to be visible through even the most powerful telescope.
That this assertion cannot be disproved does not mean that it should be allowed to influence our thinking about the solar system.
That way only chaos lies, for such speculations are infinite, p.

However as far as the Historical King Arthur goes, all the candidates are the equivalent of orbiting teapots.
What can the expert do Pronounce: Im an expert, and that argument doesnt work Who listens to that Sticking it to the experts is a trope of books and tv, especially if you can suggest theres a cover up.


So if the expert wants to enter the field, he has to deal with the infinite speculations that litter it.
The result feels selfdefeating. Graham Phillips has made a career out of finding things Arthurian, He found the Grail. He found Camelot. He identified the Real King Arthur as Owain Ddantgwyn using a chain of reasoning that was so circular it makes a spin cycle look linear.
He has not let scholarly opposition stop him, Give the man his dues: hes held his line, Recently he claims to have found Arthurs grave, The idea that Arthursth century grave can be found by reading Sir Thomas Malorysth century text has so little to recommend it that it shouldnt require pages of detailed refutation.
It is a fine example of Russells orbiting teapot,

And despite what Higham has written about not being obliged to disprove the existence of orbiting teapots, hes put himself in the position where thats exactly what he has to do.
If the purpose of the book is to educate the historyreading public, then he has to engage with Phillips argument.
Reading his three page explanation of the flaws in a portion of it pp,is like watching someone using a huge rock crushing machine to try and squash a highly mobile ant,

If the argument for an historical Arthur rests on the assumption that there is no smoke without fire its time that inappropriate metaphor was thrown out.
There may well be no smoke without fire, but stories are not smoke,

Higham does need to be applauded for his willingness to accept that medieval authors made stuff up.
Theres a peculiar strand in medieval studies, both amongst professionals and enthusiastic amateurs, that works on the assumption that everything that interests them has a prior source.
Printed like that it sounds ridiculous, But the unstated assumption is that fiction is a postmedieval invention, So, when Higham surveys the evidence and writes Waces introduction of the Round Table to Arthurian literature was a practical solution to an imagined problem, which there is every likelihood he came up with himself p. its one of the best moments in the book,

Anyone interested in Arthurian studies, historical or literary, will benefit from reading the book, Its an encyclopedic survey of the subject, written by an expert, It gathers together disparate information, and the Sarmatian, Nart and Greek chapters are a welcome summary of those diverse cases.
It does feel repetitive and labored in places, Each chapter has a concluding summary and they are all revisited in the concluding chapter,

But if the books aim is to squash the argument about an historical King Arthur once and for all, it failed before it was published.

For a while now I had wanted to read a book by a scholar that was completely immersed in both: Dark Ages' history and the bulk of Middle Ages' Arthuriana.
I knew the resulting combination would be a fascinating read for someone, like me, interested in the origins of the legend.


Higham exceeded my expectations, He provides a very detailed exploration of even farfetched possible bases for elements of the myth, I was particularly grateful for the fact that he is very aware of the evolution of the legend in the early literary works of the Middle Ages.


And even though this book focuses mostly on the historicity of Arthur, Higham also gives a brief overview of the evolution of some of the principal elements of Arthurian legend i.
e. , Excalibur, the Holy Grail, Camelot, etc, generating an even more wholesome analysis, A rigorous examination of the evidence for an historical Arthur, Spoiler alert: the author says hes fictional, We all know about King Arthur don't we He was either a local king or an army commander who fought the invading Saxons after the Romans had left Britain / England, wasn't he At the end of theth Century

You should read this book to discover how true this is.
This scholarly work brings the existence of the historical Arthur to a final definitive conclusion,

Professor Higham investigates the various theories about who King Arthur was, Could he have been a figure from preclassical Greece or a Roman soldier buried in Dalmatia Could his stories have been brought to Britain by Samartian horse soldiers stationed here in thend Century AD Do any of the local kings in any part of postRoman Britain e.
g Cornwall, Dal Riata, or the Vale of Glamorgan equate to Arthur in any way These theories are investigated thoroughly.


I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment of the book, but ask yourself why a hero ofAD would go largely unappreciated foryears until he's mentioned in a book called Historia Brittonum where his list ofvictories against The Saxons is revealed

After this, interest in King Arthur increases and hasn't stopped since.



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