Arthur’s Britain

Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image

At the crossroads of history and legend stands one of Britain’s most enduring mysteries the question of whether King Arthur was real, and if so, who he truly was. Arthur’s Britain by Leslie Alcock, one of Britain’s most distinguished archaeologists, presents a rigorous and compelling investigation into the historical foundations of the Arthurian world, drawing on archaeological evidence, documentary sources, and landscape analysis to reconstruct post-Roman Britain between the 5th and 7th centuries AD. Alcock, who himself led the celebrated excavations at South Cadbury long associated with the legendary Camelot brings firsthand scholarly authority to a subject too often lost in romantic myth, grounding it firmly in the soil and stone of a turbulent, transitional age.The work argues that behind the accretion of medieval romance lies a genuine heroic age: a Britain struggling to preserve Romano-Celtic civilisation against the encroaching tide of Anglo-Saxon settlement. Alcock’s prose is measured and precise, yet never dry, illuminating the fragmentary chronicles of Gildas and Nennius alongside the spade-work of modern excavation with equal clarity. Broad in scope yet meticulous in detail, Arthur’s Britain remains a landmark of historical archaeology and leaves the reader wondering just how much of the legend was, after all, the truth.