Night at the Museum:Secret of the Tomb

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb filmed on location at the British Museum opens in UK from 19 December 2014. You can explore the Museum with a new free app which unlocks exclusive film content and special offers at www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/family_visits/night_at_themuseum/

For an entertaining Christmas adventure try MASTER MERRYMAN

Shakespeare and Master Merryman - First Folio Discovered

News today that a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays has been discovered at a library in Saint-Omer near Calais. Printed in 1623 the book of 36 plays is the 229th copy believed to exist. The book is valued at around £4million but the librarian says the town will never sell it. Good for him. Some things are beyond price.

Shakespeare learnt much of his art from his predecessors, the heroes of my Christmas story Master Merryman, Henry Medwall and Miles Bloomfield, Medwall in particular. Shakespeare mentions his play Fulgens and Lucres in his own work and almost certainly acted in it many times. Many of his comedies included in the First Folio take their structure from Fulgens and Lucres.

MASTER MERRYMAN

That time of year again to remind everyone that my Christmas book MASTER MERRYMAN is a jolly good read. Suitable for young teenage sprigs of the family (and ssh... they might learn something.)

59th London Film Festival 2014

The 59th London Film Festival opens on 8th October and runs until 19th October 2014. The full programme released today features world premieres and the best of this year's festivals. Featured films include the World War 1 drama Testament of Youth starring Game of Thrones stars Kit Harrington and Alicia Vikander, Carol Morley's The Falling and for sci-fi lovers Monsters:Dark Continent.

Other films to look forward to are Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo and Damien Chazelle's Whiplash which was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival. The festival will also stage the European premiere of Jason Reitman's Men, Women and Children starring Adam Sandler and Ansel Elgort and the biopic Wild starring Reese Witherspoon directed by Jean-Marc Vallee.

London Film Festival stalwart Mike Leigh is bringing Mr Turner to a main gala screening starring Timothy Spall as the grumpy artist.

The festival programme will again be organised into categories of Love, Debate, Dare, Laugh, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Sonic and Family demonstrating the diversity of film genres.

Early evidence of women priests in Christian Church in 5th century

Following the recent decision by the Church of England to accept women bishops I was interested to pick up an article from Reuters last year regarding some archaeological evidence that there were women priests in the second to fifth centuries AD. There is certainly evidence for them in Britain in the Celtic Church from the fifth century on but surprisingly this evidence is in Rome and I had not come across it before.

Frescoes in the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla are claimed to prove there were women priests in early Christianity. The Vatican dismisses such claims as 'fairy tales' but given the elevated position of women in the Celtic Church this might be wishful thinking on the part of a church with a long history of misogyny.

The Catacombs on the Via Salaria reopened after a five-year restoration project.  I have not visited them myself but you can tour them virtually via Google Maps. A Christian burial site between the second and fifth centuries AD they meander underground for 13km (8 miles) over several levels. The Catacombs of Priscilla contain frescoes of women including the 'Cubicularum of the veiled woman's showing a woman with arms outstretched like a priest saying mass. She is wearing a 'rich liturgical garment' (although the word liturgical is for some reason unknown omitted in the English version) and a stole.Another room known as the 'Greek Chapel' shows a group of women sitting around a table, their arms outstretched like those of a priest saying mass.

This interests me because the Celtic Church always believed that it represented a more 'pure' form of Christianity. Women had a more equal role in society in Northern Europe than in Rome and I had assumed this accounted for equality for women within the Christian Druid Church but it seems I may be wrong and they were simply continuing a tradition within the early Christian Church.

2014 Man Booker Prize longlist

That time of year again. The 2014 Man Booker Prize long list has been published. The competition is open to American novelists for the first time but a deluge of transatlantic entries feared by some has not materialised. Of 154 entries only 40 are by US writers.

In the long list only four of the thirteen writers are American. Britain has six authors including the Indian-born Neel Mukherjee, with one novelist each from Ireland and Australia with Irish-American Joseph O'Neill being claimed by both countries.

Paul Kingsworth is the debut novelist up against some previous winners (Howard Jacobson winner in 2010) and shortlisted writers (Ali Smith 2001 and 2005 and David Mitchell 2001 and 2004).

There is a wide range of genres represented  from Kingsworth's account of life in England post 1066 told in an invented language some way between Middle and Modern English, Howard Jacobson's futuristic love story J and David Mitchell's metaphysical thriller The Bone Clocks.

This reminds me my own current novel Death Runs After is no further forward. Must get on.

Viking exhibition at the British museum

I went yesterday to Bloomsbury to the Viking exhibition at the British Museum as this is the last week. A bit later than my period but similar in many ways. The new Sainsbury Gallery is impressively large but nearly entirely taken up by the reconstruction of the ship. Other replicas I have seen were quite small but this one would hold the 300 men you read about. There were also some beautiful gold brooches and I liked the replica rune stone which has been painted to show how it would originally been coloured (which you can't do with the original). It's very eye-catching and would have been visible for miles.

A History of Post-Roman Britain 400-600:The High Kings

For those who have been following my research diary the first part of my study has been published exclusively on Kindle. It went live yesterday. If you don't have a Kindle you can get a free Kindle app for your laptop or pc.

New TV show for internet entrepreneurs

Reuters reports from San Francisco that a new TV show, brainchild of internet entrepreneur Joe Beninato, has made its debut. Internet entrepreneurs have already been featured in a new comedy 'Silicon Valley' first aired last month. The new show's concept is a self-help call-in show in which hi-tech future moguls can get advice from industry experts anonymously.

The new weekly programme called Founderline will discuss topics like raising funding. The show's creator expects most of the show's audience to watch online (of course) with episodes streamed live as well as posted on sites such as YouTube. It will be produced and aired on a local community cable TV channel in Mountain  View California, the Silicon Valley town where Google has its headquarters.

It will at least make a change from the endless run of chefs, estate agents and property developers.

April 2014 Literary Events

The Essex Book Festival 2014 Adventures with words
1 March to 31 March. 2014
Various venues across Essex

Cambridge Literary Festival
1-6 April
Various venues across Cambridge

New Writing South Build your social web presence
2, 9 , 16 April
The Writer's Place, 9 New Street, Brighton BN1 1UT

The Sword in the Stone and the Castle of Glass

In my translation of The Sword in the Stone mentioned in previous blogs I pointed out that the stone in which Arthur finds the sword has a special significance.  The sword is described as thrust into an anvil which is in turn contained within a block of nearly transparent stone.  This indicates that it has come from Caer Bannwg, Castle Foursqaure also known as the Turning Castle or the Castle of Glass which is the home of the Celtic Gods.  I suggested that the writer might have had in mind a block of transparent marble but it seems I was wrong.

Although the action in the Sword book nearly all takes place in the Spirit World the topography throughout is of the physical world of the fifth century or earlier.  I had assumed that the Castle of Glass was a figment of a poetic imagination but it seems I was wrong there too.  Just outside Inverness is the vitrified hillfort of Craig Phadrig built by the Picts around the 4th century BC.  It was built of granite but following a great fire which some archaeologists think might have been deliberate the inner and outer walls have vitrified, that is to say they have turned to glass as a result of immense heat.  Furthermore within the fort is a smal tumulus of earth cobtaining a stone at the centre. (T Wallace 1921) 

By the fifth century the Picts were Druids and in the mid-sixth century St Columba is said to have visited this site where he had a bit of a row with the Pictish Archdruid when he tried to persuade them to join the Celtic Church so this is a site which had meaning both for the Picts and for the Christian Druids.  It is still not really known how the stone became vitrified since it would require an intense heat up to 1300 degrees Centrigrade for the stone to turn to glass.  It is not surprising that 800 years on people might have concluded this could only have been the work of the gods but it seems quite possible that although the Castle of Glass itself exists only in the Spirit World (and can indeed move around) the writers of the book were aware of the existence of this physical castle of glass in Scotland.

I can't wait to go and visit.  Details of the site can be found at http://canmore.rchams.gov.uk/en/site/13486/details/craig+phadrig or just google craig phadrig to find a selection of entries.

The Synod of Whitby and its Aftermath

 

In my previous blogs I have argued that the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’cemeteries to be found scattered across Britain within Iron Age enclosures dating from 450 – 650 AD are not Anglo-Saxon at all but evidence of Christian Druid monasteries and from the evidence of bed burials from Wiltshire to Northumberland around the latter date many of these seem to have been double monasteries run by women.

The cemeteries ceased to be used after about 650 AD suggesting that the community living there at the time of the Synod of Whitby (664 AD) when the Roman church gained the support of the then High King (Bretwalda) Oswiu of Northumberland and thus official ascendancy over the Christian Druid (Celtic) church.

The question for archaeologists and historians is did this phasing out of double monasteries occur in a single purge, like the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16^th century, or was it a more gradual process?

Here archaeology is no help because the dating is not precise enough but we are not in the realms of pre-history in the 7^thcentury and documents give us the answer.

In 668 AD the distinguished Greek monk Theodore of Tarsus was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Vitalian. Theodore was well-versed in the disciplines of astronomy and ecclesiastical arithmetic and lectured basing his knowledge of the calendar on the movement of the

planets in the Ptolemaic universe, one in which the earth was at the centre of the solar system and the planets, including the sun, moved around it.

 In my biography Columbanus: Poet, Preacher, Statesman, Saint I describe how Columbanus fought tooth and nail against the church adopting this fallacious argument which was in part designed to support the political claim that the earth was the centre of the universe, the Emperor in Byzantium the centre of the earth and therefore God’s representative on earth and as such the sole possessor of absolute power.  Columbanus was arguing strenuously for the paramount importance of rationality and empirical truth not to mention the political independence of western Europe and by inference the individual. 

 When Theodore was born in 602 AD the Byzantine Empire (the eastern Roman Empire as was) was under threat from Persian and Arab incursions along its eastern borders and succeeding Byzantine Emperors began to look at the potential for expanding westwards and reclaiming the old western Imperial provinces including Britannia. Theodore’s appointment should be seen in this light. He was very much the imperial choice. Pope Vitalian was still one of the five patriarchs answerable to the Emperor in Cosntantinople which was besieged by the Arab fleet in 670 AD.  Tarsus, Theodore’s home town, had been taken by the Ummayad caliphs in 661 AD so in 668 Ad he was effectively a refugee.  He brought with him not only an impressive array of Greco-Roman learning but also the icons, art-forms, silk and purple vestments, the liturgy, relics and veneration for eastern saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Theodore was no fool.  He knew he could not just impose these things on the British Church.  Instead he attempted to create a fusion between the Roman Catholic Church and the Celtic Church.  His efforts at even-handedness are witnessed by the fact that he restored the Roman Catholic Wilfred to the Bishopric of York and the Celtic/Irish saint Chad to that of Lichfield. 

 He advocated the use of the penitential developed by the Celtic Church (see Columban’s version of Finnian’s penitential) but with a few crucial differences.

Included in his rules are a few that indicate why the cemeteries ceased to be used after 650AD or thereabouts.  Theodore ordered (before 690 AD when he died) that churches may be moved without new consecration and adds that any church may be moved just with the consent of the local bishop and his chapter.  He also insisted that women were not to be allowed to offer penance (hear confession and grant absolution) which meant that effectively they could not be priests.  Monks incidentally were not priests either but the injunction is not applied to men.

  It seems therefore that moves were afoot from the 680s onwards to close down the double monasteries, move their communities off the Iron Age sites which established continuity between the new Christian church and its Druid past, and push women back into an inferior position within the church.

That this was a new development in the late seventh century we can tell from the fact that in 633AD a double minster was founded at Lyminge in Kent, not far from Canterbury, for Aethelberg, the daughter of Aethelbehrt, the King of Kent.  There is nothing in the ruins to indicate any separation between nuns and brothers in the nave.  Yet in the 670s a scandal is reported involving the double monastery at Coldingham in the far north of Bernicia (Northumberland/Scottish borders) headed by Abbess Aebbe, the sister of King Oswiu and aunt of King Ecgfrith.  Scandals did arise from time to time of course but the timing of this one is suspicious.  When the monastery was destroyed by fire in 679 AD it was deemed to by a divine judgement.  Had Aebbe resisted the attempts to close her down?

 Nevertheless it appears that the phasing out was more gradual than the dissolution of the monasteries.  As late as 704 AD Abbess Aelfled is still influential enough to attend an important synod and be asked to give her advice.

 It is at this time that the Benedictine Order , more amenable to accepting the control of the church, makes its appearance in Britain.  Most of England’s mediaeval cathedrals offer foundation dates between 690 and 710 AD and most of them were originally Benedictine monasteries which suggests that the Benedictines were able to establish themselves quite quickly by transplanting Christian Druid communities from their Iron Age locations to the sites of the new abbey churches.

Arras Culture: The Search for the Holy Grail

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been reading Francis Pryor's Britain AD which has given me much to think about.  He mentions that the famous archaeologist J Mortimer noted that Ssaxon and British barrows very often occur in the same place and concludes that it is as if the later sites have been deliberately positioned in the landscape adding that this is not what you would expect from a recently arrived group of settlers.  In the previous blog I put forward my theories as to why these sites were chosen.

Pryor also mentions the 'Arras culture'of the late Iron Age with its distinctive square barrows surrounded by a ditch believed to date from the 4th - 1st century BC.  Similar barrows have been found in northern France in the Marne valley, the presumed origin of this 'invasion'.  However Pryor challenges the theory that there was an invasion at all and suggests that these changes are down to the native population rather than an influx of foreigners.

A note of caution - the Arras after which this culture is named is not the town in northern France but a small town in the East Riding of Yorkshire although the importance of enduring place names should never be discounted.  Nevertheless this 'Arras culture' is a useful clue when dating the book of the sword in the stone and the holy grail (see my book The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone).  True, Arras in northern France is on the Somme and not in the Marne Valley but it is in the sane geo-political region.

In that book the writers claim that the cult of Lud comes to Britain from northern France at the same time as Christianity (40AD) just a little before the 1st century date  BC proposed for the Arras culture.  It was of course convenient for the Christian Druids of the early Celtic Church to suggest that this later form of Druidism and Christianity arrived at the sane time.  Place names in Britain containing Lud or Lydd in the name are scattered all across the country indicating that this cult was widespread and enthusiastically embraced. 

At the end of the story two of the leading characters  Percival and Galahad return the Sword of Truth, the Spear of Justice and the Holy Grail to the Gods in the city of Arras - this time the one on the Somme, which is described as being in Austrasia, the name of the Frankish kingdom in north-eastern France throughout the early mediaeval period which had its capitals at Metz and Reims. (Although Frankish kingdoms are a bit tricky - see my book Columbanus: Poet, Preacher, Statesman, Saint on how they worked.)

This detail is an important clue in dating the Sword book to the late fifth century.  The writers knew that the pre-Roman cult of Lud came to Britain before the Empire via north-eastern France and although the story itself is legendary it indicates that they had a fairly accurate historical memory from oral history of this time.  Although Arras continued to be an important cathedral city throughout the mediaeval period (and still is) it did not attain the religious status it clearly had for the Druids and the sacred character it is given in the book.  It seems unlikely that a late mediaeval author, Thomas Malory or anyone else, would have had either the knowledge of pre-historic Iron Age Britain or any reason to give particular distinction to this part of France but it was very dominant in the period when the book was writte - the late fifth/sixth centuries AD. 

Coddenham and West Heslerton archaeology - an alternative theory

 Some time ago I published a blog in which I suggested that the Coddenham bed burial might be suggestive of an early Christian double monastery.

 I have been reading Francis Pryor’s book Britain AD in which he explores the evidence from the site at West Heslerton and I have drawn the conclusion that this is perhaps another such site. 

 West Heslerton is in the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire.  The Vale of Pickering was once occupied by a huge body of water forty miles long known to archaeologists as ‘Lake Pickering’.  At a later date it became a series of smaller lakes and marshes, not the sort of area that a marauding army would choose to settle.  The site has been extensively excavated by a team led by Dominic Powlesland from 1977 onwards. 

 Points to note about the Anglian village, which is my period, are

 ·         The post Roman village is close to an Iron Age settlement with Iron Age/Druidical religious associations.  This repeats the pattern found at Coddenham further north.  Pryor suggests this is a deliberate choice as barrows and earthworks would have been clearly visible in Saxon times.  I agree with him but it begs the question  as to why Saxon migrants would want to associate themselves with an early British sacred site? Pryor suggests this is a form of validation and that it might be the church rather than the civil authority that wishes to make this validation.  Again I think he is right but it is not the Roman church that would wish to make such a validation but the ‘Celtic’ Christian Monastic/ Druid Church

·         Stable isotope analysis of 24 bodies found in the cemetery show 4 Scandinavian (3 adult women and a juvenile female), 10 local people and 10 from the other side of the Pennines.  Francis Pryor suggests this result is ‘unexpected’ but I would suggest it is only unexpected if you are looking for evidence of Saxon raiders and a male-dominated community.  If you are looking for a Celtic double monastery then this result is precisely what you would expect.  

·         The examination of the cemetery also suggested poverty to the archaeologists, no grave-goods such as you normally find in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, but again it would be what you would expect from an early Christian community which has taken vows of poverty.

·         As with the Coddenham site we have a service village alongside to house the tenants and servants of the monastery.  The presence of Grubenhauser (a type of rectangular dwelling associated with Saxon settlements which have a level below ground for storage/protection of livestock in winter) suggests a rural community.

·         It’s interesting to note that here the monastery seems to have adopted the local building style and that the model of dry-stone beehive huts found on the west coast where there are few trees is not repeated here).  Given the lakeside setting it is probable that the monastery was in fact a crannog.  The important monastery at Bangor in Northern Ireland was constructed in this style with the monastic huts extending out into Strangford Lough.

·         Most excitingly this is an early settlement dating from roughly 450 AD (when the merger between the Christian Monastic movement and the Druid Church took place) and is evidence that the combined church which we call Celtic spread very quickly across the whole country suggesting that the Christians were able to avail themselves of the infrastructure the Druids already had in place.  The cemetery both here and at Coddenham ceased to be used after about the middle of the seventh century (650 AD).

These sites are important not because they show evidence of a Saxon invasion, which they don’t, but because they confirm what we can learn from the historical documents. In the mid-seventh century the Synod of Whitby saw a shift in religious power.  Oswiu, the king of the North East, backed the Roman Church represented by Wilfred. 

What the archaeology tells us is that after the Synod of Whitby several Celtic monasteries, especially it seems those double monasteries run by women, were disbanded, the communities segregated and resited on sites more conducive to Roman control, probably to existing Roman churches were the Roman church owned the land and the Metropolitan bishops had more authority.

Both Coddenham and West Heslerton are in the area controlled by Oswiu and within the diocese of York of which Wilfred became Archbishop.  There is evidence of the same process happening elsewhere in the country.


At St Albans there is a 7^th/8^th century cemetery in King Harry Lane on the opposite side of the valley to the present Abbey which records show was founded in the very late 8^th century.  The present Abbey is on a site between the Roman Town of Verlamium at the foot of the hill and what would have been the Roman fort on the summit.  It is probably  therefore on the site of a then existing Roman church.

Many of our mediaeval cathedrals date their earliest phase of building from the late seventh/early eighth centuries when Wilfred’s influence and power were at their height. 

The sites at Coddenham and West Heslerton are therefore I believe of great importance not as evidence or the lack of it of Saxon invasion but indicating a significant shift in the religious balance of power and with it a change in the dominant ideology which had very practical social and political consequences for the rest of the early mediaeval period which deserves further investigation.

I am on the case! 

Sherlock - taking fiction too seriously?

The Daily Mail today complains of left-wing bias in the BBC drama series Sherlock on the grounds that the archvillain in last night's episode is a press baron and (inferred because we don't know this) a capitalist.  He is, or rather was as Sherlock shoots him at the end, also Johnny Foreigner in keeping with the mindset of the original. 

Archvillains of course need to be outrageously wealthy in order to carry out their dastardly schemes and are pretty much bound to be capitalists.  I thought it a little more worrying that there was an assumption that a press baron would be innately cavalier with the truth.

However I feel that the DM is getting its knickers in a twist about nothing.  One could equally argue the opposite view.  The eponymous hero and indeed everyone at the FCO and MI6 who represent the British Establishment are distinctly posh.  Not too many dropped consonants there.  The only chap with a glottal stop is a drug addict.

Sherlock is an adventure story and one should beware of reading too much into fiction.  It is what it says on the tin and there is that awfully good story about tilting at windmills.  There is no point in starting at shadows. 

2014 Films to catch up on

Three very different films I can recommend.

Star Trek: Into Darkness  Latest in the franchise with spectacular special effects.  The Starship Enterprise is now so big it must take light years to walk round it. As an old Trekkie who has been watching this series since its start in the 1960s I have to say the new cast is very good.  I did not find myself hankering after the original.  Benedict Cumberbatch very effective as the villain - he will be back!

Chicago  Snazzy jazzy musical.  Stellar cast do justice to hit stage show.  It betrays its stage origins a bit but inventively transferred to the screen.  Great dancing, great songs.  Worth two hours of your time.

Culloden 1746 This was on a channel called movies for men but don't let that put you off.  It's a 1970s film which had somehow passed me by but a good historical film, very accurate in its depiction of a rather difficult event to dramatize.  I thought they had a good go.  The cinematography is beautiful, lovely subdued rich colours of a Scottish landscape in winter and carefully composed interiors to imitate 18th century paintings.  Lovely to look at and a fine performance by Brian Blessed.  I don't know why it isn't shown more often.  It ends badly but of course you knew that.

London Comedy Film Festival 2014

More dates for the diary.  As I was at one time a comedy writer I will be looking forward to the LOCO London Comedy Film Festival 2014 which runs from 23rd - 26th January and will be spread across various venues in London including BFI Southbank, Hackney Picturehouse, Ritzy Picturehouse, Greenwich Picturehous, Institut Francais and the Lexi Cinema amongst others.  This year's programme boasts the biggest line-up of venues yet. Tickets go on sale this week.

I am particularly looking forward to the World Premiere of Jamie Adams's film Benny and Jolene which is being held on 24th January.  This film starring Craig Roberts and Charlotte Ritchie as a hapless indie folk due trying to compromise between their credibility as musicians and commercial interests and possible falling in love is right up my street as I was also once a folk singer.  The screening will be followed by a question and answer session with the director, producer Jon Rennie and Charlotte Ritchie.

Looks like fun.

King Arthur was an Englishman

On Monday 6 January 2014 comedian Griff Rhys Jones is presenting a programme A Great Welsh Adventure showing on ITV at 8 p.m. in which he explores the notion that King Arthur was from mid-Wales.  I have not yet seen the programme but from the trailer it seems he has made the cardinal error of conflating the two King Arthurs.

The legend

The first King Arthur - the legendary one associated with the Holy Grail - was a Celtic God.  The origins of his story certainly have close connections with South Wales - see my book The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone (www.amazon.com) for details and previous blogs on the subject.

The history

However, there was a real High King called Arthur wo reigned from around 500 AD to 543 AD making him one of our longest reigning monarchs.  It is often claimed there is no evidence for his existence but this inaccurate.  There are numerous perfectly respectable documentary references to him, more than for any other High King of the period, so no reason to suppose he didn't exist. He is mentioned in the lives of four contemporary saints, St Brynach, St Carantoc, St Illtud and St Dyfrig (Dubricius) as well as by historians Nennius and Gildas. 

Nenniius is regarded as slightly suspect but Gildas was writing shortly before 560 AD (he mentions Maelgwn Fawr as still alive and he died of the yellow plague in 560 AD) and was probably writing within about ten years of Arthur's death, the exact date of which is recorded in the chronicle Book 14 in Malory's Mort D'Arthur.  This date fits comfortably with all the other references so it is reasonable to accept it as accurate. 

The claim for his non-existence rests largely on the fact that he is not mentioned at all in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle but the Saxons only mentioned their victories and we know they suffered numerous defeats at the hands of Arthur which explains their silence on the subject.

Where does Arthur come from?

We first meet Arthur in the life of St Brynach when he is around eighteen years old.  He is accompanied by his friend and companion Cato, indicating that these are Romano-British boys.  Arthur is at this time not a king but a prince of Dumnonia, the old British kingdom roughtly corresponding to Somerset, Devon and parts of Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire - thus he is 'English' rather than 'Welsh'. 

It was one of the wealthiest kingdoms of post-Roman Britain with a thriving villa society attested to by the archaeology of the area.  That Arthur is a prince we know from the fact that he makes a grant of land to SS Brynach, Carantoc and Illtud to allow them to found their monasteries.  The lives of early saints are not always reliable but they are usually pretty sound when it comes to land grants as they were often used in the Middle Ages to support the legal claim of the monastery to its foundation lands. 

Arthur is of the Aurelian dynasty, the hereditary kings of Dumnonia, and successor to Ambrosius Aurelianus.  We know this because his successors, Constantine and Conanus both bear the family name Aurelianus.  He was therefore Artorius Aurelianus.  The Aurelians regarded themselves as the descendants of the Emperor Constantine whose mother Helen was British.  Whether Arthur is the son or nephew of Ambrosius is not clear.  Gildas describes his mother, clearly a formidable woman, as a 'she-dragon' meaning a female warlord, but he does not give us her name or say whether she is the wife or sister of Ambrosius.  In the life of St Carantoc, before he is king, Arthur is described as 'lord of the west' but this does not extend far into Wales.  The Liber Landavensis gives him a connection to the Silurian Kings.  His grandfather is said to be Cystennyn Gorneu who is said to have founded churches in Erging (Hereford, Gloucester and Gwent) and his father's sister was married to Pebiau ab Urb ab Erbin, King of Gwent and Erging.  St Dubricius was of the same family which accounts for the fact that he is said to have crowned Arthur High King circa 500 AD.

Dunster Archaeology

What is particularly exciting about these early saints' lives is that they connect Arthur with Dunster in Somerset as his home base.  Recent aerial photography has shown the outline of the Roman fort at Dunster at the foot of the bluff, not under the mediaeval castle on top of the hill.  Dunster was the principal port on the south side of the Bristol Channel in the fifth century.  It silted up in the 12th century and trade moved up the channel to Bridgwater and then later to Bristol.  Dunster is now about two miles inland.  Arthur would have been based at the fort and when excavations begin there is a fair chance that some physical evidence of his reign may emerge.

I am of course teasing when I say that Arthur was an Englishman.  There were neither Welsh nor English in the sixth century.  He was a Briton who regarded himself as a Roman.

In the meantime you can check out the references:

The Life of St Brynach can be found in Thomas Wakeman's Lives of the Cambro-British Saints which can be downloaded free from http://www,arcguve.org/streamlivesof thecambrobritishsaintsThomasWakeman

Gildas and Nennius are both available free on the internet and the archaeology can be found by searching 'Dunsterarchaeology'.

UK Literary Festivals 2014 January - March

It's that time of year when you start filling in your new diary so here are some useful dates for bibliophiles.

The first literary event of the 2014 season is also the first Purbeck Literary Festival which will take place between February 17 and March 2 at Purbeck in Dorset.  It will feature romantic novelist Katie Fforde, Andrew Lane, the author of Young Sherlock Holmes and local writer Tricia Walker.

Designed with me in mind (social anthropologist/political scientist amongst other things) is the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival Reflections 2014 which will explore the distinctive qualities  social science and literature bring to our understanding of the world around us and our place within it.  The festival will focus on reflections on war and peace, embracing the centenary of WW1 using language and metaphor as well as exploring the contemporary world as it appears to a new generation.  This festival runs from 25 February to 1 March 2014 at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.

One of the UK's most beautiful cities and one I never mind visiting will host the York Literary Festival, the seventh to date, which will include author events, storytellings, theatre and cinema plus a guided tour of York's sites of literary merit.  As a star turn poet Roger McGough, host of BBC Radio's poetry please, is booked to appear on 28th March. The Festival will run from 20th to 24th March 2014 in the lovely city of York.

Not far away Huddersfield will be hosting its own literary festival between March 6th and March 16th 2014 so plenty to enjoy.