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Ashe, Geoffrey "The Discovery of King Arthur". 2005, Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Glocs. Pbk, xi, 244pp. Illus, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-7509-4211-8, £8.99. (1st ed publ 1985 by Henry Holt & co. Rev edn 1st publ as hardback 2003)

This is a revised edition of a book first published in 1985. As I don't have the original edition, I'm unable to say whether this new edition contains much by way of amendment or addition compared to the original, although if there has been much change it's very well camouflaged.

The main purpose of this volume of Arthurian history is to promote Geoffrey Ashe's theory that at the base of the Arthurian mystery lurks a real historical personage, and that historical personage can be shown to be (or at least closely resemble) someone who is already known to history.

However, to do this requires some considerable examination of the main texts that have survived from the post-Arthurian period to see how much can be said with any certainty regarding post-Roman Britain, and whether any of the extant references to "Arthur" can be related to what else we know of the period and places.

Ashe presents a convincing narrative of the interaction between the native Britons in the 5th century and Saxon and other raiders, coping with the encroachments, sometimes successfully, other times less so, and locates Arthur's claimed victories in the mid 5th century period when there was, apparently, a successful containment of Saxon advances. This containment, which is evidently supported by the archaeological evidence, could only have been done by a military leader who was both an able battlefield commander and one who could co-ordinate the necessary resources to make military engagements a success. This would, in the historical context, necessarily have been a High king of the Britons.

And Geoffrey Ashe has located such a personage in the historical record, a certain Riothamus, who was described as being the King of the Britons (or possibly Bretons) by a scribe called Sidonius Apollinaris, who lived in Gaul, and whose letter to Riothamus, still survives. Said Riothamus, like Arthur in certain versions of his legend, is known to have led a force of warriors, "from over the ocean" into the Loire valley there to engage Saxon settlers and which intended to join up with "Roman" forces to fight the Visigoths who were active in central Gaul. Sadly the Britons were caught unsupported by the Visigoths and suffered an overwhelming defeat, which Riothamus survived with such of his force he could gather. He is then, said to have withdrawn to Avallon in Burgundy, and then disappears from the historical record.

Ashe suggests that it seems unlikely that both Arthur and Riothamus would have existed at the same time and undertaken the same battles and that therefore there is a case for making an identification between them. Also subsequent to this period the British came under renewed pressure from the Saxons, whose advances made any further appointment of High King impossible as the British had become too fractured to make any systematic unified response to the Saxons.

Since the first edition it seems that Ashe's theory has been accepted by some writers as at least being plausible, even if it is, at the current stage of knowledge, incapable of being proved. Others remain sceptical. One possible problem with the theory is that we know of a Riothamus who was described as a leader of the Bretons (that is those Britons who colonised what is now Brittany in the period from the 3rd -5th centuries) and who shared the same name the Dumnoni as their compatriots in what is now the area called Devon in south west England. Which raises the possibility that Riothamus designation as High king might simply refer to him being a king who controlled land on both sides of the channel that belonged to the same tribe.

The main problem is that the figure of Arthur in the medieval and later texts is one that even at the earliest dates contains elements that may be purely legendary, the legends may refer to more than a singular person and there idea of an objective "history" was even more remote in those days than it is now. The Chronicles were to serve a variety of purposes and the past was written in the light of those purposes without necessarily being determined by them.

Besides the main theory Geoffrey Ashe looks at the subsequent use and development of the Arthurian mythos in (mainly) British culture, up to modern writers such as Rosemary Sutcliffe, but this is fairly sketchy and has been superseded by the output of more recent writers, not to mention the efforts of Hollywood, which has brought the Arthurian story to many more people, even at the price of often re-writing the legends once again.

So does the book live up to its title? Well that all depends on whether you are convinced by his argument. Personally I found it interesting and I learnt some new information about 5th century Britain and Gaul. However, there remain too many lose ends, too many altering of dates (Geoffrey Ashe explains why some dates may be incorrect due to variant Christian dating methods - but if one or two are incorrect how do we know the others aren't incorrect as well?) It also encouraged me to see what else I could find out about Riothamus but it seems that Geoffrey Ashe has pretty much given us everything there is and no contemporaries seem to have made the link between him and Arthur. So the main thesis remains unproven, but before you decide to discard it or not, I'd recommend at least reading this book to see what evidence there is for it.

Overall, this is an interesting work and worth getting if you are interested in the Arthurian period of British history. If you have the earlier edition I'd recommend you have a good look to see if you can spot any major differences before parting with your money. For example I counted just over a dozen entries in the bibliography, which post-date the first edition, but Ashe seems to make little use of them in the text. The illustrations are adequate (and one hopes that the Fortean Picture Library will be properly rewarded for the ones they have supplied) as are the bibliography and index.

A thought provoking read

7/10

Richard Alexander