Epox!

Hello and welcome to this episode of Epox, where we shall be talking about Geoffrey of Monmouth,

the history of the early kings of England and King Arpa,

and I am joined by a returning guest, Elizabeth Hatherin. How are you?

Hello, I'm doing well, thank you.

Good, good. So first of all, how did you first come across Jeffrey of Montmouth?

I visited Tintagio Castle in Cornwall with my grandparents, which is the birthplace of King Arthur.

Allegedly.

According to legend.

When you're there, you feel that there's something extremely enchanting about it.

It has that same appeal that places like Stonehenge and Stone Circles have, in Glastonbury,

for example.

But I went into the bookstore. My granddad pointed out a book and there was the history of the Kings of Britain.

Right.

And he said, this is the man that populized the legends of King Arthur.

But most people think he just made it up.

So I bought his book and I wrote my dissertation at university on Historia,

Réin Hurtigne, talking about how I believe it was a moral exemplar created by, well,

written down by Geoffrey of Monomuth in order to warn his Anglo-Norman contubrates about the dangers of infighting. Right, okay. Yeah. That's interesting, I've never asked you. What did you do at uni then? Did you do medieval history or? History in politics. Oh right, okay. They ended up specialising in medieval history. Oh right, okay, cool. because most people, if you haven't studied it, even history nerds may well not even have heard of Jeffrey from Monmouth, I think. Quite a lot of people would never have heard of him. So, okay, before we get stuck into the Arthurian legend, because I think that's the best bit, isn't it? It's the most interesting bit, certainly the most famous bit.

Let's just talk about him and the book in general a bit first.

So I think it's fair to say, I wonder if you disagree and if you do to what extent,

to say that it's a pseudo-history.

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