Here's the proposed blurb for "The King Arthur Conspiracy", just in from the publisher:
Most of what we know - or think we know - about King Arthur came from the pen of one Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1137. His account in a History of the Kings of Britain quickly became the accepted version of events. It was, however, extremely wide of the mark. With his story, Geoffrey created a myth and allowed the English to imagine that Arthur was one of their own. Indeed, to visit the grey ruins of Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall is to feel as though one has stepped into the world of Arthur. That feeling is illusory. The castle did not exist when Geoffrey wrote his account of Arthur's birth. It was built by the brother of Geoffrey's patron, who thereby created a sort of Arthurian theme-park in the wrong part of Britain.
A hero named Arthur undoubtedly existed, but his legend was stolen, uprooted from its proper place and time and transplanted to another country. The scam of Arthur's grave and the subsequent myth that Glastonbury was the Isle of Avalon formed a further part of the early Church's conspiracy to reinvent Arthur as an English paragon.
So where is Avalon - the blessed isle on which Arthur was buried? And who was the original King Arthur? Simon Andrew Stirling here draws on a vast range of sources and new translations of early British and Gaelic literature to identify history's true Arthur, and to pinpoint his precise burial location on Avalon.
Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.
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