That behind the legendary figure of King Arthur there stands a real person is now generally agreed. He was the last champion of Roman Britain and the last great commander of the Romanized Britons in their struggles against the Anglo-Saxon invaders. He played a vital - and hitherto not fully realised - part in the formation of the character of the English people. The intriguing gap of time between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England and the transition of one into the other is here carefully and lucidly considered as the setting in which Arthur was placed. The Story-book trappings round Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table and the fantastic exploits described in Malory"s Morte d"Arthur, are shown as merely "the inconsequential extensions with which legend thins out fact". They have obscured the genuine historic significance of the man and his work. Here, the author goes back to the few available sources of information to see if they can be reconciled and interpreted in a way that re-creates a series of events and dates for Arthur"s life. He also scrupulously sifts the legends for any grains of historical fact they may contain and puts forward some new and important theories. -- excerpt from back cover