Was Arthur historical? King Arthur

A painstaking study of the early sources unsurprisingly reaches no solid conclusion

Man or Myth Tony Sullivan

Pen & Sword 2020

Hb, 246pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781526763679

Perhaps no figure blurs the line between myth and history as much as King Arthur. Was there an historical Arthur, and if so how much does he resemble his literary counterpart? In general, historians and archæologists tend to think that Arthur is a legendary or literary figure, or that if he did exist we know nothing about him. This hasn’t stopped countless writers from seeking evidence of an historical Arthur in the frustratingly incomplete source material. In King

Arthur: Man or

Myth, former fire investigator Tony Sullivan joins the debate.

His book is focused on a round-up of the extant sources for Arthur and his age, including those (like Gildas) that say nothing at all about him. By examining all of the available sources right up to the Middle Ages, Sullivan hopes to identify which Arthurian theories might be correct, and which lack any foundation in the evidence, even if he can’t come to any specific conclusion.

Sullivan’s approach to the sources is thorough and inclusive. Going source by source, he discusses contemporary textual records such as the writings of Saint Patrick, moving on to Gildas, Bede, Nennius, the Welsh Annals, saints’ lives, Geoffrey of Monmouth, French romances and more.

This painstaking, comparative approach does a good job of showing the ways in which the sources agree and disagree, as well as which texts influenced each other. Despite expressing some scepticism about his sources, Sullivan seldom really engages with them as literary works, although he does observe that some quite early ones are written for an audience who presumably know who Arthur is.

In the end, Sullivan’s conclusion is unsurprising: there may have been an historical figure named Arthur who flourished some time between 450 and 550 and whose career inspired the later literary figure, but it’s impossible to say for certain.

King Arthur: Man or Myth is aimed at the newcomer to Arthuriana. For example, Sullivan takes the time to point out that early Arthur stories often don’t include characters and elements familiar to modern readers, or gently debunks ideas that no one who has studied late Roman or early mediæval history holds, but which might be common among people who haven’t. The slight bibliography tends to support this view.

Unfortunately, this book is somewhat let down by what looks like hasty, sloppy editing. Maps are fuzzy and ugly (although not hard to read), and there are numerous simple grammatical errors and mispellings.

Sullivan’s work is at its best when it demonstrates the difficulties of trying to establish a single timeline from the available sources, in the process critiquing Arthurian theories that rely too heavily on a single source. It could be a handy work for someone interested in the types of available evidence for an historical Arthur.

James Holloway

★★★

A History of English Place Names and Where They Came From

John Moss

Pen & Sword 2020

Hb, 408pp, £25, ISBN 9781526722843

The title is self-explanatory. The author’s previous book for this publisher is Great

British Family

Names and Their

History.

The current work spends the first couple of dozen pages setting the scene. There’s a glossary of terms encountered in the Domesday Book, to give an understanding of life at that time. Then we have a useful section on common elements of placenames, from a variety of sources such as Old English and Celtic; for example bury is Old English for a (fortified) manor house. We then have a very short history of migrations and invasions of England, all of which have left their mark on the names we use today. Placename origins is next, pulling together the logic with which our various ancestors named their locations. And finally a few pages on the ranks of people who would have an interest in the land.

The meat of the book is 317 pages of placenames and their origins. My first gripe is that it is arranged geographically: the North East, the North West. However there is an index at the back so that can be used as an alphabetical sort. Descriptions vary from two to three lines up to about half a page. But there are strange omissions. There is a section on Greater London looking at the boroughs and townships and places therein, but no entry for London itself. And there are some locations covered in the introductory chapters but not in the body of the text.

The elephant in the room is that there is already a well established text covering very similar ground, Brewer’s Britain and Ireland – The History, Culture, Folklore and Etymology of 7500 Places in These Islands. The page count of Brewer’s is three times that of this book. It covers Britain and Ireland, not just England. And it goes into a lot of places in more depth. But the Moss book has some places not in Brewer’s.

And they give different information – not contradicting each other but offering different peripheral material. Brewer’s gives location details such as other towns nearby and rivers and what is happening there now, whereas Moss gives more historical information about changes in the location over time, including a nice list of alternative names through the years. And Moss finishes with a chapter of novel, odd and unusual place names. But the names used are only in this section, so if you are interested in the origin of Wetwang you will not find it in the North East chapter – you can only locate it by using the index.

You’ll find this book useful and enjoyable and occasionally frustrating, but I don’t think you will regret having it. Brewer’s is £5 more expensive and generally the one I will reach for first, but I’ll check this book afterwards for the extra snippets of information I know I will find.

Gordon Rutter

★★★

The Science of Sherlock Holmes

Stewart Ross

Michael O’Mara Books 2020

Hb, 192pp, £9.99, ISBN 9781789292190

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s medical training gave him an advantage when he created his “scientific detective”. In many respects Sherlock Holmes was an early adopter in applying scientific principles to crime, combining careful observation with hypothesis testing based on the evidence. Stewart Ross argues that Holmes’s combination of intellect, forensic skill and practical, if idiosyncratic, knowledge accounts in large part for the longevity of his popularity.

Ross sets out to examine the links between Holmes’s methods and scientific progress in the late 19th century. He interprets science loosely, as he looks at technology as well. Short chapters cover medicine and forensic science, plus animals, weaponry, optics, developments in transport and communications, and miscellaneous scientific understanding. Topics are illustrated by reference to the stories in which they feature.

Advances in a particular field

are occasionally tracked to the present, but space constraints necessarily limit these to a quick sketch. Sometimes the relevance of a point is obscure – a brief explanation of the difference between internal and external combustion may be interesting but it throws little light on the Holmes stories.

Despite the depiction of Holmes’s dedication to cool logic, Ross shows that, unsurprisingly, Conan Doyle was primarily concerned to present a good yarn, and often Holmes’s reasoning, while entertaining, does not withstand close scrutiny. Conan Doyle was happy to bend science in the interests of the plot, and the amount of scientific content in the later stories, produced long after he had ceased to practise medicine, declined and became less accurate.

This is a quick read in bite-size chunks, and anyone who enjoys the Holmes stories yet knows very little about the science and technology of the period will enjoy it. But it is far from the first book on science and the Holmes stories, not even the first with this precise title. As Ross includes better ones in the short bibliography, it is a puzzle what he thought he was contributing to the already extensive body of works dedicated to literature’s most famous detective.

Tom Ruffles

★★

Magic in the Landscape

Earth Mysteries & Geomancy

Nigel Pennick

Destiny Books 2020

Pb, 176pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781620558799

In this reissue of his 2013 book Nigel Pennick’s main focus is how people enchant the landscape (or discover the mystical within it), and themselves become re-enchanted from their experience of place.

Certain topics are well covered, such as leys, crossroads, graveyards and the relationship between heavenly bodies and the landscape, yet there are several which aren’t as familiar. Two in particular I found fascinating. The first is the relationship between 17th-century landscape architects such as Sir William Chambers and Feng Shui. (This also answers a question I’ve had for a long time about the Chinese Tower in the English Garden here in Munich). The second is the chapter about triangular areas of land such as Devil’s Holts, cocked hats or gilltraps, and is important in its discussion of how patches of waste-ground can be as mystical to communities as churches.

Pennick is especially strong when talking about temporary fairs, drawing on personal experience as a participant in the Rougham Fair in Suffolk, and Lyng Fair, Norfolk. It’s also reassuring to read about Stonehenge, in terms of its continuing relevance to communities, from the post-mediæval period to the festival of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and beyond.

There is real passion, and at times anger, about the treatment of the landscape. This is particularly noticeable when he is talking about enclosure, a process of disenfranchisement which saw the common land in England divided up into individual allotments for landowners.

Where I might disagree with Pennick’s arguments surrounding archæology put forward in the book (many archæologists share his passion for how people engage with place, including me), this is an interesting examination of geomancy and its role in shaping our experience of landscape. Steve Toase

★★★★

A Dark History of Tea

Seren Charrington-Hollins

Pen & Sword 2020

Hb, 184pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781526761606

For centuries, tea was known only to the Chinese and Japanese (the Mongol rulers saw it as a sign of decadence). Every detail of tea preparation, from the slow mountain streams where the best water was sourced, to the implements for its preparation, the handling of the leaves, and even the mentality of the drinker and the atmosphere in which tea was to be drunk was raised to a ceremonial art by scholars and monks. Apart from the suicide of Japanese Tea Master, Sen no Rikyu (15221591), this era of its history is not dark, rather decidedly tranquil, as is the early history of tea in north-western Europe, remaining an elite luxury throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries, although certain coffee houses gained notoriety.

With the opium-tea-silver triangle opened between Britain, India and China by the East India Company, trading tea for opium, which they exported to China for silver, conditions were created for China’s serious social and economic undermining that led to mass addiction, political instability and the Opium Wars. As the national debt spiralled, driven by these and other colonial wars, rising taxes and import duties triggered the smuggling of tea by gangs whose ferocity rivals modern drug gangs for how they treated those accused of stealing their tea. In common with today’s lab-concocted drugs, adulterating materials like iron filings were a danger in the manufacture of “smouch”, counterfeit tea. Sugar might have glass in it; milk could have chalk or boracic acid, approved by Mrs Beeton.

With tea cultivated in Upper Assam by the 1830s, migrant labourers from poor castes, whose low position let them handle the fertilising animal bone ash taboo to others, endured a living hell of harsh work, disease, starvation, squalor and torture. Meanwhile, the British press contrived an illusion of pluckers joyfully harvesting tea, much like village maidens picking wildflowers. The abortions and beatings endured by these female “coolies” only became a concern in the early 20th century. All this misery was simultaneous with the emergence of that most genteel of rites: the ladies’ afternoon tea party.

By way of poisoned tea, and sorcery-swindles, the author concludes with a guide to tea-leaf scrying and a glossary of meanings for about 200 tea leaf signs, an art whose decline has been hastened by the invention of the tea bag; and yet can any selfrespecting tea drinker be entirely free of tea-related superstitions?

A short work on the dynamics between a natural stimulant and national cultures and commerce, mainly of the British: emphasising the greed, exploitation, beliefs, crimes, eccentricities and sorcery stimulated by the world’s most popular hot beverage, this is a strong brew, well served with imagery. If tea’s your choice, put the kettle on and read it.

Jerry Glover

★★★★★

Aftershocks and Opportunities

Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic Future ed. Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, Alexandra Whittington

Fast Future Publishjng 2020

Pb, 192pp, £12.95, ISBN 9781999931162

Published back in the distant days of May 2020, this book was clearly written quickly, consisting of some 30 short essays by “future thinkers” covering society and social policy, government and economy and business and technology.

Things have moved on, and the book was written without the benefit of our expensively bought hindsight. One essay mentions a worst case where there are 10 million infections by the end of 2020; we are now at over 50 million. The issue of who will win the US election in the light of the pandemic, or whether it will even take place, is no longer a matter of speculation.

The essays are rational and sensible, covering topics like health policy, strategies for dealing with future pandemics and why remote working might not continue post-pandemic. Such logical thinking jars against the messy, irrational reality of the last six months, in which world leaders downplay the virus, governments make repeated policy U-turns and blame each other, and the clash between economics and public health has turned deadly.

In some ways Aftershocks and Opportunities is too late; but in other ways it is too early. Perhaps sometime in late 2021 we will be able to absorb its ideas with the necessary detachment. At present reading this feels like perusing a book on the future of marine engineering as the Titanic sinks beneath the waves.

David Hambling

★★