Artur, Gwenwhyvawr and Myrddin: Ancient Britons of the North

I'm not actually writing about King Arthur, Guinevere, or Merlin. Though no doubt, given the subject of the book I'm about to review, they will come up.

I've been doing research for a project I was assigned on a module I'm taking at University, which led me to a pursuit of King Arthur. I stumbled across this book and, finding it easy to read, got through it whilst on the bus going down to Cardiff on Saturday.

I found dozens of books in our library alone with as many solutions to solving the mystery surrounding this legendary king; since the middle of the 19th century writers have puzzled over it, and every solvent appears true till put to the scrutiny of another.

Alexander and William McCall, Alex and Will I'll call them, are two passionate brothers with an interesting proposition that, if nothing else, is engaging and easy to get a handle on. For this reason alone I recommend the book as a study into a more reasonable look at King Arthur than you are likely to get out of the cinema (even those wretched excuses for films purporting to be realistic, whether 2004's King Arthur or the 2007 The Last Legion), or in any work remotely linked to fiction.

Not being a scholar in the subject, nor having vastly undergone a study in the existing solutions that counter Alex and Will's, I cannot say whether, in the light of other critics their logic holds up. They do, however, present a believable genealogy linking Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Camelot, and Avalon complete with dates, historical evidence through the centuries, and compounding folklore.

The McCall's propose that Arthur was not a king but a successful war leader and son of Aidan, King of the Dalriada in 6th century lowland Scotland. He was 3/4ths Briton, and through matrilineal descent had charge of the lands pertaining to his British mother's side of things, including land called Camelon and Avalond, whose names betray certain similarities to later legends. Even Mordred is accounted for, and several of Arthur's knights. Given the time period he was in it is inaccurate to attribute our later ideas of 'kingship' upon a people or group of peoples who would have been bereft of the very notion.

Alex and Will present a good case; certainly compelling, and plainly written enough that, despite some confusing family back and forths become, in the end, a negotiable web. They tend to repeat certain things over again in different ways and various sections of the book; once in a while this is tedious. Mostly it serves to job an ailing memory such as my own.

As much as I would recommend any book, this one passes, in my humble opinion, the sharpest muster. Whether you like their interpretation or throw it out entirely due to actual or emotional reasons, it provides a wide background to early Britain through the eyes of chroniclers often ignored or passed over due to more prominent successors.