Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms by Alistair Moffat

Gildas, Nennius and The Welsh Annals are taken largely on trust, with no sense that there are major textual and contextual issues. Much is made of the reference to Arthur in the North British poem of The Gododdin, but the critical apparatus expected in his discussion is mostly missing. Detail ‘The last sleep of Arthur’ by Edward Burne-Jones (1898) It is, however, when we come to the association of Arthur with this area that the real problems start.

He is clearly trying to restore a sense of forgotten history to the Lowland Scots and, several quibbles aside (such as projecting back late and post-medieval lore onto the Iron Age and early medieval period, and a lack of caution over placename evidence), I think he is largely successful in that restoration.

Moffat, a native of the Scottish Border country, sympathetically evokes the Celtic tribes (the Damnonii, Novantae, Selgovae and Votadini) who, squeezed between Gaelic, Pictish and Anglian peoples, forged successor kingdoms in the Dark Ages. Instead, the major part of this book is given over to a study of the area between the Walls, both Antonine and Hadrianic, before, during and after the Roman occupation of Britain. Thank goodness these “lost” kingdoms are not “holy” kingdoms, as is claimed by conspiracy theorists from southeast Wales! At least we don’t have to suffer a rant about secret histories suppressed by the ignorant English and the arrogant establishment familiar from similar “histories”, “true” stories and “final” discoveries. King Arthur: photo by Julia Margaret Cameron

Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms by Alistair Moffat