Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Legends of King Arthur (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Europe by Dr Mary Bateman and comedian Mike Wozniak to learn all about the legends of King Arthur.
Most of us have heard of Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. But where do these legends come from? Arthur first appears in the writings of a 9th-Century monk, but he’s not the king we know today: no Merlin or Lancelot, no Excalibur, and no Camelot. These elements were added later, as the legends were retold and rewritten across Europe.
This episode traces the stories of Arthur and his knights from their early medieval origins, exploring the changes made as they were adapted over the centuries by everyone from French romance authors to Victorian poets, and taking in some famous medieval texts, including the Welsh Mabinogion and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, as well as some lesser-known tales. Along the way, we also look at the places in modern Britain that still bear Arthurian names and the wacky artefacts that have been associated with the legendary king, and ask the crucial question: did King Arthur really exist?
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Hannah Cusworth and Jon Norman-Mason
Written by: Jon Norman-Mason, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands
Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: James Cook
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:06 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:37 Speaker 02 It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting.
0:42 Speaker 03 A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation.
0:47 Speaker 02 And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Misha Glennie, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:13 Speaker 04 BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
1:18 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are saddling our noble steeds and galloping back to the Middle Ages in search of the legendary King Arthur. And to help us on our quest, we have two chivalrous companions at arms. In history corner, she's a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where her research focuses on the literature of late medieval and early modern England. Luckily for us, she's also the author of the prize-winning book, Local Places and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400 to 1700. It's Dr Mary Bateman. Welcome, Mary.
1:53 Speaker 06 Hi, thank you so much. What a joy to be here.
1:55 Greg Jenner? And in comedy corner, making a triumphant return to the show, he's a comedian, an actor, a podcaster. You'll have seen him in Taskmaster, Man Down, and again in Taskmaster as Rose Matafeo's assistant on the wonderful Junior Taskmaster, which is lovely. Plus, you'll have heard his dulcet tones on many podcasts, including my absolute fave comedy podcast, Three Bean Salad, check it out. But you'll know him best from our previous episodes, including our festive special about Charles Dickens himself. It's Mike Wozniak. Welcome back, Mike.
2:20 Speaker 07 Thank you very much for having me back. I'm very excited. I'm particularly excited about the topic.
2:24 Greg Jenner? Interesting. I mean, you're a total legend, but King Arthur, total legend. What do you know?
2:29 Speaker 07 I think it's the sort of thing you carry through your life if you've grown up in Britain. Oh yeah, I know about that. But do I know about it? So I don't know. That's partly why I'm so excited to be here.
2:38 Greg Jenner? I think it's a huge subject. There's quite a lot you can know without knowing the details.
2:42 Speaker 07 And is it just because I'm familiar with it? Is it just because of some sort of Osborne book as a kid? Or because I played a King Arthur battle as a 10-year-old? It's so familiar, but I doubt there's any detail. I'm very excited about getting into it hard.
2:56 Greg Jenner? We'll find out if there's any detail. So what do you know?
3:04 Greg Jenner? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I think like Mike, you definitely would have heard of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin. Most people will have seen an Arthurian screen adaptation, I think. That's your Disney Sword in the Stone, your boisterous King Arthur with Keira Knightley and Clive Owen, your John Bormans, weird and wonderful Excalibur. You've got The Kid Who Would Be King, the sing-along Camelot. You've got the BBC series Merlin. There's Dev Patel in the swoon-worthy Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Quite weird, but good. Obviously, the best Arthurian movie ever is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A film I love so much, I wrote my master's thesis about it. I am on home turf today. Finally, something I know about. And that's not mentioning all the operas, plays, poems, video games,
3:48 Greg Jenner? paintings and books about King Arthur. But where do these stories come from? Was the medieval Arthur the same as our Arthur today? And just how big was a round table anyway? Ooh, let's find out. Right, Dr Mary. Hollywood's vision of Arthur, or Arthuriana, I think is what we call it, the collective world of King Arthur. Hollywood makes it all sort of shiny armour, knights running around, ladies in pointy hats, dangerous forests. It's very 14th century. Is that where we start our quest for King Arthur?
4:20 Speaker 06 No, absolutely not. And actually, the first mentions that we really get of a possible Arthur figure are a lot earlier than this, and they suggest Arthur is a lot earlier than this. They place him in kind of post-Roman Britain, okay, so just after Emperor Noreus has withdrawn troops in four ten. There's that couple of hundred years that we often hear called the Dark Ages. Yeah, I know, I feel the same. This is when some of the earliest texts place Arthur's rule as having happened, which makes sense because the province of Britannia is being invaded and raided by a series of different groups. You have the Picts and the Scots from the north. And you've also got Angles, Saxons, Dukes coming in, those Germanic groups who would form the first kingdoms in England.
5:05 Speaker 06 Britain needs a hero, and so there are lots of bits of poetry written about heroes, and this is where we see the first mention of Arthur. So the earliest texts we have about him seem to suggest he might have been a military leader of some sort in post-Roman Britain. We're talking sort of four fifty to five fifty C E. So about a thousand years earlier than your pointy hats.
5:25 Speaker 07 Okay, and they're written at the time, or they're written later?
5:29 Greg Jenner? Key question. They're a bit later, but they're sort of set at the time, aren't they?
5:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, they are quite a bit later. The earliest references to Arthur are very enigmatic and fragmentary, which just add to his appeal, really. There is a very early Welsh poem, now I say Welsh, but we think it was written in the very, very north, kind of south of Scotland, north of England, called Og Dorin. The really important mention, the first detailed mention we get of Arthur comes quite a bit later, in around eight thirty. And it's in this text called The History of the Britons, and it's an attempted history that traces the origins of Britain right back to this hero called Brutus.
6:07 Speaker 07 The Trojan dude.
6:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, the Trojan dude, yes, okay, yes.
6:10 Speaker 07 All I know about him is that he, he left Troy, had a few adventures and then came here and in a classic sort of conqueror style, ki- killed some indigenous giants or something, and then said, this is mine, by the way.
6:21 Speaker 06 Yes, exactly that. And yet you see him in the Middle Ages being called the founder of Britain, and there seems to be a kind of oversight of these giants who were originally there.
6:31 Speaker 07 Poor sweet giants.
6:32 Speaker 06 Yeah.
6:33 Greg Jenner? So the next text we have to talk about would be a Welsh classic. My pronunciation's going to be dreadful, but Mabinogion?
6:39 Speaker 06 That's great, yeah, Mabinogion. And actually, that's a collection of texts, Mabinogion. Within this collection of tales, there are some interesting Arthurian examples. The Mabinogion, it doesn't appear until quite late in manuscript form. So we're talking sort of 14th, 15th century manuscripts. But we think the texts contained within them were actually probably first written down as a collection much earlier in the 11th or 12th century. And here's the kicker, they probably have oral origins, some of them that are even earlier than that. But one of my favourites, and one of the earliest, is a tale called Kulukhukolwen. So basically, Arthur has a cousin called Kulukh, or Kilukh, who's a young man, and he's fallen in love, potentially through a curse, but never mind,
7:22 Speaker 06 with a young woman called Olwen. And her father is a terrible giant called Isbadadon, chief of all giants. In order to win Olwen's hand, Kilukh is given a series of tasks, impossible tasks, 40 of them, he has to complete. He can't do this on his own, so he goes off to King Arthur's court and enlists the help of Arthur and his kind of almost superhuman knight.
7:46 Greg Jenner? All I'm hearing here, Mary, is he invented Taskmaster. That's what I'm hearing. Like, 40 tasks, off you go. That's a series of Taskmaster.
7:52 Speaker 07 It's a bunch of guys around a round table who might be up for it, up for a challenge. The Mabinogion I'm vaguely familiar with, it's incredibly weird. Like, I mean, people sort of seem to change form quite regularly.
8:04 Greg Jenner? It feels quite, I don't know.
8:06 Speaker 07 I assume at some point someone's got to kill a boar, right? Normally they think someone's got to kill a magical boar.
8:09 Speaker 06 Yes. How did you know that? That's brilliant.
8:12 Speaker 07 I think that just kicked into my memory. It's just dragged up from the back.
8:14 Greg Jenner? He is King Arthur, it's coming back to him.
8:16 Speaker 06 It's you. Yeah. No, that's the climax point, really, of the whole. So these 40 tasks are very varied. And the climax is this hunt for this boar called Turchweth. And the interesting thing is, a large number of the tasks relate in Some way to preparing for this great boar hunt that happens at the kind of climax of the story. And the reason why they need to hunt Tuchruth is that this giant scary boar has between his ears on his, on his hairy little head.
8:44 Speaker 07 He's got a male grooming set.
8:46 Speaker 06 He does.
8:46 Greg Jenner? You do know this story.
8:48 Speaker 06 Is this, is that what you were thinking when you were thinking it's quite out there?
8:51 Speaker 07 Maybe, yeah, yeah. There's a, there's a sort of Miyagi style kind of training, secret training going on. And then, yeah, he wants to trim his beard and.
8:58 Speaker 06 Yes.
8:59 Speaker 07 And get his dream curls going for, for wedding day, right?
9:02 Speaker 06 It's, it seems.
9:02 Speaker 07 He wants all the bounce and no frizz.
9:04 Greg Jenner? That's it, that's it.
9:04 Speaker 06 Exactly, yeah. There are familiar names. So we have Bedwyr or Bedwyr, Gwalchmae, which doesn't sound very familiar, but it's the Welsh name for Gawain.
9:13 Speaker 07 Right.
9:13 Speaker 06 Um, and Arthur's wife here is Gwynnwyr, which sounds very familiar.
9:17 Greg Jenner? That's good, isn't it? So that the, we're definitely edging towards Gwynnwyr, we're getting towards Gawain. So we're, it's starting to feel Arthurian.
9:25 Speaker 06 Yeah.
9:25 Speaker 07 Beginning to feel familiar, yeah.
9:26 Greg Jenner? But it's not, it's not quite there yet.
9:28 Speaker 06 And there's lots of weird names in Arthur's court as well.
9:31 Greg Jenner? Yeah, and I, you know, I mean, according to the tale of, is it, how do you pronounce it? Kiluch?
9:35 Speaker 06 Kiluch or Coluch.
9:36 Greg Jenner? According to the tale of Kiluch and Oren, we've got King Arthur and a host of 260 warriors.
9:42 Speaker 07 Oh blimey.
9:43 Greg Jenner? Quite, quite a lot of people he's, he's sort of gathered around his table. They've got some special talents.
9:47 Speaker 07 Yeah.
9:48 Greg Jenner? Some of them are quite weird special talents, Mary. I mean.
9:51 Speaker 06 Yes.
9:52 Greg Jenner? We've got Cyte, son of Seir.
9:53 Speaker 06 Cyte, son of Seir, who has amazing eyesight.
9:56 Greg Jenner? Okay, that's good.
9:56 Speaker 06 Which sounds useful, but then you also have Penpingion, who walks on his head to save his feet.
10:02 Greg Jenner? Amazing.
10:03 Speaker 06 Less useful.
10:04 Speaker 07 Can you describe how he, how he does that? Exactly? Is he pogo?
10:07 Speaker 06 I assume he's just walking around upside down on his hands all the time, but surely that's a superpower, not a very helpful one. I don't think his, his nightly peak years are going to last him long, to be honest.
10:16 Speaker 07 He's more of the show pony end of things, perhaps.
10:19 Greg Jenner? You don't want to trust him in a fight, do you, really?
10:21 Speaker 07 He's prattling about with his handstands, showing off to the local peasants.
10:25 Greg Jenner? We've got Eir, son of Hira.
10:26 Speaker 06 Mm hmm.
10:27 Greg Jenner? He's got fantastic hearing.
10:28 Speaker 06 Yes.
10:30 Greg Jenner? Mike, what talent do you think Lip, son of Placid, possesses?
10:34 Speaker 07 Lip?
10:34 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
10:35 Speaker 07 Is he a polyglot? Is he a man of many tongues?
10:37 Greg Jenner? That's a very, very good guess.
10:39 Speaker 07 Yeah.
10:40 Speaker 06 Yes, too useful, too useful.
10:44 Greg Jenner? I mean...
10:45 Speaker 07 Magical kisses?
10:46 Greg Jenner? Again.
10:47 Speaker 07 Can he kiss it all better?
10:48 Greg Jenner? That'd be, what a wonderful thing.
10:49 Speaker 07 For the Injun knights?
10:50 Greg Jenner? Oh, that'd be so good.
10:51 Speaker 07 He's like a medic, yeah.
10:52 Speaker 06 Like a kind of rogue figure.
10:54 Greg Jenner? No, no, his skill is, well, I'll read you the quote. "On days when he was sad, he would let his bottom lip drop down to his navel, and on the other day, it would be a hood over his head."
11:08 Greg Jenner? Yeah, so the party trick he does with his bottom lip is it goes down to the navel. But I should clarify, actually, the top lip goes up over the head, like a hood. How do you see?
11:19 Speaker 07 Wow.
11:20 Greg Jenner? I don't see how that's particularly useful.
11:22 Speaker 07 So he's used to measure the emotional temperature of the squad?
11:24 Greg Jenner? Maybe that's it.
11:25 Speaker 07 Is that right? Like his sort of morale barometer? It's quite useful for leaders, I think.
11:30 Greg Jenner? Yeah, how is morale today while Lip is currently wearing his lip like a hat?
11:33 Speaker 07 The Injun knights will just say that they're fine, but are you really? Let's have a look at what Lip's doing.
11:38 Greg Jenner? And after this charmingly weird mabinocion, we get our first English source, Mary. And it's not entirely English, because Geoffrey of Monmouth is a bit Welsh.
11:47 Speaker 06 He's kind of extremely famous in the Arthurian tradition, because around 1136, 1137, he produces this book called the Historia Regum Britanniae, or The History of the Kings of Britain. You're not, I think you probably have heard of this one.
12:01 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah. This is the one that starts with Brutus and...
12:03 Greg Jenner? Yeah, yeah.
12:04 Speaker 06 Yeah.
12:05 Speaker 07 Ends with the Saxons coming and giving everyone a wallop.
12:08 Speaker 06 And you might notice an overlap there with the Historia Bretonum, and that is a major source for Geoffrey. But he's a lot more elaborate on Arthur's life than what has come before, so much so that people think, did he make all of this up? I would imagine that if you'd grown up in Monmouthshire, and if he did indeed have Welsh family, he would have been familiar with oral stories that we know were circulating about Arthur. But I think a lot of the detail is his own biographical elaborations, if you like. And it is so, so popular. So there's, I think, something like 215 copies that survive from the Middle Ages.
12:41 Greg Jenner? Yeah, that's incredible.
12:42 Speaker 06 So it's really.
12:43 Speaker 07 He's the Grisham of his.
12:44 Greg Jenner? Yeah, he's the John Grisham of the 13th century.
12:47 Speaker 06 Well, it's just, it's a hu- it's just like a huge, huge change in terms of the record of the history of Britain.
12:54 Greg Jenner? Yeah. We would call him a chronicler. We would call him a historian, but he's hugely important for the literature aspects of what becomes Arthuriana. So do you want to talk us through that?
13:03 Speaker 06 Yeah, massively. So because that we don't have much of a biography of Arthur before, what Geoffrey adds in terms of details is incredibly important for the romances. And we find out about Arthur's conception, which is not a very nice story. He's the son of a king called Uther Pendragon. His mother was married to someone else and then Merlin helps Uther to trick her by disguising him as her husband. And it's all not very consensual. Yeah. What else is familiar here? He has a wife called Guan Hamara, who's essentially, again, Guinevere. He's betrayed by his nephew Mordred, which becomes a very crucial part of Arthur's story. He has a relative called Morgana Lefay.
13:42 Greg Jenner? Who's not a baddie.
13:43 Speaker 06 No, she's not.
13:45 Greg Jenner? Because I think most people will hear the name and go, Morgana Lefay, baddie, sorceress, evil queen, witch lady.
13:50 Speaker 06 Yeah. She's really done dirty by later authors, but not here, no.
13:54 Speaker 07 Because she's the one behind the Green Knight, isn't she?
13:57 Speaker 06 Oh, yes. She is mentioned in the Green Knight story. And by that point, she's not, not very nice by that point. Because she wants to frighten Guinevere to death, which is horrible. And Merlin is the other important addition here.
14:09 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
14:09 Speaker 07 Is that where he first appears?
14:10 Speaker 06 There's an earlier figure in the Welsh tradition called Mirdin, and he's a poet and he's a prophet as well.
14:17 Greg Jenner? And that then kickstarts what we might, we might charmingly cheekily call fanfiction. It's not necessarily fanfiction, but it's a sudden surge of other writers going, oh, I can, oh, I can run with this. I can add to this. And, and it starts straight away, doesn't it?
14:31 Speaker 06 So what Greg's referring to here is the romance tradition that starts in Europe, which is very hard to summarise because it just explodes so quickly. Geoffrey's text is translated, so it's originally in Latin. A handy lingua franca for the period. And it's translated very, very quickly into French by a Channel Islander called Wass, into English, translations of it all across Europe and into Welsh as well, actually. So, yeah, from the 12th century, we start to see Arthurian literature being composed. The lion's share of Arthurian romance, really, most innovative Arthurian romance that we see at the earliest date is in French. Some of these authors in particular, I'm thinking here of Marie de France, who I'll talk about in a sec, and also Cretian of Troy, Cretian de Troyes.
15:14 Speaker 06 They really are interested in these big questions about how a knight balances his chivalry, his martial obligations with, you know, being courtly and refined and being a lover. Yeah, he's a lover and a fighter, ladies. And Arthur, in these texts, becomes a, we call him a rapha néant, a do-nothing king. He's a lot less important than his knights and all of their affairs and adventures and things like that. And Lancelot is actually, he isn't even in the Arthurian tradition prior to romance.
15:45 Greg Jenner? Well, let's do a mini quiz for you, actually, Mike. So Cretian de Troyes is probably the most important writer of this period, writing in sort of the 1170s, 1190s. Adds quite a lot of iconic elements to the Arthurian canon. So which of these five iconic elements was not Cretian's invention? So I'm going to give you five. One of them's not from Cretian. One, Camelot. Two, Lancelot. Three, Lancelot's tragic romance with Guinevere. Four, the round table. Five, the quest for the Holy Grail. Which was not Cretian's invention? I'm going to say the quest for the Holy Grail. It's a good guess, but it's the round table. Is it really? Yeah, the round table. It was first. The round, Cretian didn't come up with that. Cretian came up with the others. So who invented the round table?
16:29 Speaker 06 The round table is first mentioned in, do you remember earlier I mentioned Wass, the Channel Islander who translates Geoffrey and adapts it, makes it more interesting? Yes. And one of the additional details that he includes is that a circular table is produced that can seat knights all the way around it with no hierarchy. So it's to get rid of squabbling about seniority. In the Grail. Texts, this has developed a bit, so there's always a seat that's left vacant called the Siege Perilous, or the Dangerous Chair, the Dangerous Seat.
17:01 Greg Jenner? Yeah, siège means chair in French.
17:02 Speaker 07 Yeah.
17:03 Speaker 06 Yeah. And the idea being that it's deadly to sit in, the only person who can sit in it has to be the most pure knight going, and that's the only one who can achieve the quest for the Grail.
17:13 Greg Jenner? What do you think of when you think of a Holy Grail?
17:15 Speaker 07 Beyond the Monty Python film.
17:16 Greg Jenner? Well, okay, beyond what, what do you think of when you, well, in terms of what it looks like, what it is?
17:20 Speaker 07 Well, I'm a follower of Indiana Jones.
17:22 Greg Jenner? Good, good.
17:23 Speaker 07 It's going to be a basic cup, you know, perhaps wooden, yeah, that that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper.
17:28 Greg Jenner? Mm hmm.
17:29 Speaker 07 And I think the legend was that if it could be restored to Britain, that that would heal the nation. I think that is also involved in this kind of Joseph of Arimathea.
17:39 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
17:39 Speaker 07 Did he come to Britain? If so, did he bring Jesus as, as, you know, as his apprentice? Did he buy a cup from a gift shop in Glastonbury while he was here? Did he take it back and then, is it like nicking a hoe garden glass from a pub? Was it not actually his glass and he was supposed to return it to the bar, but he didn't, he didn't know any better. He's not from this, in other words, do you know what I mean? Is that?
17:58 Greg Jenner? Cretian says.
17:59 Speaker 06 Cretian says that it is a flat serving dish for presenting the Eucharist wafer.
18:03 Greg Jenner? I need to ask also, we've mentioned the Round Table.
18:06 Speaker 07 Yeah.
18:07 Greg Jenner? How many knights are sitting around the Round Table?
18:08 Speaker 07 I, I always imagined it was like a baker's dozen.
18:12 Greg Jenner? You're thinking thirteen?
18:13 Speaker 07 I was thinking King Arthur and then a dozen knights.
18:16 Greg Jenner? You're bang on for one of the sources, but we also get, I mean, various numbers, right?
18:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, so it ranges from twelve knights up to a lot more than that. In La Ramon's Brut, he says that a carpenter builds this fold-out portable table that can be carried around, that can seat as many as sixteen hundred knights.
18:35 Greg Jenner? One thousand six hundred knights.
18:37 Speaker 07 This thing is portable, we're saying.
18:39 Greg Jenner? So the Round Table can seat thirteen.
18:41 Speaker 07 Yeah.
18:41 Greg Jenner? Or one thousand six hundred.
18:43 Speaker 07 Or somewhere in between.
18:44 Greg Jenner? Or somewhere in between, it really depends. So each Arthurian text was changing core elements, Mary. We're seeing here writers coming in, adding bits, tweaking bits, taking a name, running with it, you know. We also, we need to mention Marie de France.
18:58 Speaker 06 She's a really important figure because first of all, there aren't many female Arthurian authors, to be honest, at this early date that we know of. And Marie de France translates this group of stories that she says are Breton lays, which were kind of sung to a harp in Brittany. There's one called L'Enval about a knight who is overlooked by Arthur and Guinevere and just not treated very well. And he ends up being rescued by a fairy lover who he has a very good time with in a meadow in a tent somewhere. And she rides in to rescue him and he leaps on the back of her horse and rides off just as he's about to be given this terrible trial at Arthur's court.
19:33 Speaker 07 Yeah, lovely stuff.
19:34 Greg Jenner? Right, yeah.
19:35 Speaker 06 So she's great. I love, I love Marie de France and a good length as well. You can just dip in and out.
19:40 Greg Jenner? And she was writing in the late 1100s.
19:41 Speaker 06 Yes.
19:42 Greg Jenner? And what's interesting after that is we get what's called the Vulgate Cycle.
19:45 Speaker 06 Yes.
19:46 Greg Jenner? A slight pivot in the direction of the themes.
19:49 Speaker 06 Yeah, a little bit. It's also really the first time that we start to see a lot of these disparate stories being brought together into a kind of very epic coherent whole. But yeah, the Vulgate Cycle, we're not sure exactly who wrote it, but we think it may have been written by someone, possibly a secular author who had spent time in Susterian circles. And they were all about kind of mystical things, which explains why the-
20:11 Greg Jenner? So they were monks?
20:12 Speaker 06 Yes, which explains why the Grail is such an important part of that part of-
20:17 Speaker 07 When is this?
20:18 Greg Jenner? Early 1200s.
20:19 Speaker 07 Okay.
20:20 Greg Jenner? So we start to see a slight pivot away from the kind of The Adventures of Knights and it's becoming a little bit more about like Christian purity and the idea of the ideal knight. Have you heard of Le Mort Arthur as a book by Thomas Mallory? Have you read it?
20:34 Speaker 07 I don't, no, I haven't read it. I have heard of it. He's sort of Rapskalian figure, isn't he?
20:41 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
20:42 Speaker 07 Sort of, it's a prison book.
20:45 Greg Jenner? You know your stuff, don't you, Mike?
20:46 Speaker 07 I have to confess, I think it's one of those things that I've intended to read for a long time. I've never, do you know what I mean?
20:52 Greg Jenner? It's on the list behind all the Grishams.
20:53 Speaker 07 I may have even owned it at some point, you know, and it's been put on the bookshelf in front of the Grishams.
20:59 Speaker 07 But then you reach for aggression.
21:00 Greg Jenner? Yeah, you're spot on. Yeah, so, okay, you haven't read it, but you know that he's a bit of a, bit of a character.
21:05 Speaker 07 Yeah.
21:06 Greg Jenner? I mean, Mary, this is the, very much the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the 15th century. Here is someone trying to grapple with an enormous sprawling collection of stories, where people are rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, and he's gone, oh, we need to standardise this. We need to bring this all into one coherent narrative, a beginning, middle and end, about King Arthur, and he dies at the end. We call it Le Mort d'Artur.
21:27 Speaker 06 Yes.
21:27 Greg Jenner? Which sounds pretty sexy.
21:29 Speaker 06 Yes, no, it wasn't.
21:30 Speaker 07 And it's a major spoiler.
21:31 Greg Jenner? Yeah, yeah, actually, that's true. Yeah, you're right, actually, yeah.
21:34 Speaker 06 It does massively give the game away. The original title in English was different. It was The Whole Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table, which I think is more, it leaves you to guess what the ending's gonna be.
21:44 Greg Jenner? Yeah, Le Mort d'Artur, you're right, it's a, it's a real.
21:46 Speaker 07 Sure, but it's, it's less easy to put in, it's not such a sort of front of the bookshop type title.
21:50 Speaker 06 So it's written in 1469, 1470, so we're talking quite late at this point in the Middle Ages, quite a bit later than the other romances we've been talking about.
21:58 Greg Jenner? It's just before the Tudor era, it's right at the end of the Middle Ages.
22:00 Speaker 06 Wars of the Roses, yeah, and it's 1485, it's actually printed, and it's printed by this printer called William Caxton, and Caxton retitles it Le Mort d'Arthur, presumably because it sounds kind of classy.
22:13 Greg Jenner? Yeah, Mallory is a politician, he's a sort of sheriff, he does some bad stuff, he ends up in prison. So tell us, who was he?
22:21 Speaker 06 Well, we had three candidates. We weren't sure which Thomas Mallory Knight who was imprisoned it was. As it turns out, there were three candidates, but the one who looks most likely, he was from Warwickshire. And yeah, he had a very colourful career, shall we say. He was a sheriff, he was a justice of the peace. Five times, he was an MP.
22:39 Greg Jenner? Wow.
22:40 Speaker 06 But he was also accused of some pretty terrible crimes and spent time in prison for them. And these range from cattle rustling and things like that, to robbing a local abbey.
22:50 Greg Jenner? Wow.
22:50 Speaker 06 And all the way up to attempted murder of the Duke of Buckingham, theft, rape and extortion. So all in all, not. Known as being a particularly nice, particularly nice guy.
23:01 Speaker 07 It's as old as time, right? The guy seeking office to, gotta, gotta, gotta get in office again. Just in case the law catches up with him.
23:08 Greg Jenner? It's the Donald Trump strategy, isn't it?
23:10 Speaker 07 Exactly, yeah, it's effective.
23:11 Speaker 06 And yet he's accused of all these terrible things. And actually, we think that he may have written Le Mort d'Arthur, which I don't know if you've ever seen a copy, but it is massive.
23:17 Greg Jenner? It's huge.
23:17 Speaker 06 It's one of those books that people say that they've read sometimes when they haven't read all of it because it's so, so long. And we think that he wrote it during a period of imprisonment, possibly Newgate Prison, or possibly somewhere.
23:29 Greg Jenner? Tower of London.
23:30 Speaker 06 Maybe somewhere where he would have had access to manuscripts that contained enough of the his source material that he could use then.
23:37 Greg Jenner? So Le Mort d'Arthur is a sort of compendium of stories. We break it down into eight tales.
23:42 Speaker 06 So it takes you right from Arthur's conception through his rise to the throne. You've got the sword and the stone story in there about him pulling the sword from the stone and becoming king. He goes over to Europe and conquers the Roman Empire after a nasty challenge from a Roman emperor. We're introduced to all of his round table knights and some of the other romances.
24:00 Greg Jenner? It's got 150, hasn't it?
24:01 Speaker 06 150 of them.
24:02 Greg Jenner? A good round number.
24:03 Speaker 06 Quite a lot. Lancelot is more important than in other English romances in Mallory because of his French sources. And this is where you get the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, that great love triangle. Mallory's kind of squeamish about the sex stuff, so they don't have sex.
24:18 Speaker 07 It's all for the mass market, right?
24:19 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, and possibly a slightly more prudish audience, I don't know, until quite late in the text. And then after everything goes wrong for Arthur and he's betrayed by Mordred and the knights fall into kind of infighting and factions, partly because of what happens with Lancelot and Guinevere, it all goes very wrong. Arthur is mortally wounded and is taken off to Avalon. This is one of those texts where we are told, some people think he doesn't live anymore. And this is where we first hear Arthur called the once and future king.
24:49 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
24:50 Speaker 06 And then there's a funny postscript with Lancelot and Guinevere where they become a monk and a nun, respectively.
24:57 Greg Jenner? So this is the kind of classic text that students read, well, try and read and then very quickly give up. So it's, it's a romance, but it's not that romantic as everyone dies at the end.
25:06 Speaker 07 Yeah.
25:07 Greg Jenner? The nuance window!
25:14 Greg Jenner? So it's time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Mike and I sit quietly at the round table for two minutes with our many, many, many other knights. And we give Dr Mary two minutes to tell us something we need to know. So my stopwatch is ready. Without much further ado, the Nuance Window, please.
25:28 Speaker 06 Okay, so we haven't spoken much today about the period between the 16th and 19th centuries. And that's because a lot of people think of this as an Arthurian Nodia. No one is interested in Arthur. No one is writing about Arthur. And actually, this is the time when you see some of the weirdest and funniest texts being written about Arthur. I'm going to give two examples today, but there are tons of others. Two of my favourites. The first is a little pamphlet published by a famous balladea called Martin Parker, a famous history of King Arthur, 1660, so just on the cusp of Monarchic Restoration. And it seems fairly normal until you delve into his massive list of Arthur's knights, which alongside Gawain, Lancelot, includes names like Sir Doggery, Sir Board, Sir Frisky, and Sir Bigot.
26:12 Speaker 06 And I love this because people talk about Parker and this particular text as examples of royalist propaganda. And it just goes to show how even the more sober Arthurian genres at this time are becoming playful. There's some tongue in cheek stuff going on here. It's not attempting to be history anymore. And because of that, things get a lot more diverse and interesting. Because we mentioned Hull earlier, did you know that there is a Merlinic prophecy, a prophecy supposedly attributed to Merlin about Kingston upon Hull? And it's invasion by parliamentary forces. Lots of people don't, and I don't know why you would. But I find it really funny that Merlin, who is a royal advisor, is co-opted as a
26:54 Speaker 06 prognosticator, as a prophet for parliamentarianism, you know, around the civil war period. I just find that completely wonderful. And a great testament to how even in this Nodia, things can continue to be reinvented.
27:08 Greg Jenner? Amazing, thank you so much. There you go, to King Arthur. He's the once and future king because actually he keeps coming back. But with a new-
27:15 Speaker 07 Yeah, whatever's needed at the time.
27:17 Greg Jenner? Right. So there we go. How do you feel about King Arthur now, Mike?
27:20 Speaker 07 I thoroughly enjoy it. I love that. It's been an absolute feast.
27:23 Greg Jenner? You knew way more than you let on. You said earlier on that you had, like, rough outlines.
27:27 Speaker 07 I wasn't sure. Yeah. I'd loved it as a kid, I think, in particular. And there's so many brilliant movies and things that remind you of-
27:34 Greg Jenner? There really are. There are so many movies about King Arthur.
27:35 Speaker 07 Excalibur in particular. I mean, I'm gonna have to go back and watch that.
27:38 Greg Jenner? Excalibur's a great one. First Night, not so good.
27:40 Speaker 06 Yeah. We seem to share the knowledge between us, which I love. Everyone has something a bit different.
27:45 Greg Jenner? Exactly, exactly. There you go. All right. Well, thank you so much. Listener, if you crave more Wozniak in your life, of course you do. Check out our episodes on Stone Age Chattle Hoyuk. Chattle Hoyuk, do you remember that? Yeah?
27:55 Speaker 07 I do.
27:55 Greg Jenner? Or, of course, Dickens at Christmas, a very festive episode. And for more lovely legends, we've got an episode on Atlantis, which was not real, but very interesting. And remember, if you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a review. Share the show with friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But I just want to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the brilliant Dr Mary Bateman from the University of Bristol. Thank you, Mary.
28:16 Speaker 06 Thank you so much. This has been great. Thank you.
28:18 Greg Jenner? Lovely. And in Comedy Corner, we had the marvellous king himself, Mike Wozniak, the once and future Arthur. Thank you, Mike. It's lovely.
28:25 Speaker 07 I've loved it. Thank you so much.
28:27 Greg Jenner? Fabulous. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we ride off on another historical quest. But for now, I'm off to go and trim my beard. First, I just need to find a wild boar. Bye!
28:43 Speaker 08 Strong message here from BBC Radio 4.
28:46 Speaker 00 I'm Amanda Unucci.
28:47 Speaker 08 And I'm Helen Lewis.
28:48 Speaker 00 A comedy writer and a journalist, teaming up like a pair of unkempt and unlikely superheroes.
28:53 Speaker 08 Our mission is to decipher political language.
28:56 Speaker 00 Stress testing to destruction, those used and abused buzzwords and phrases.
29:00 Speaker 08 Finding out what they really mean.
29:02 Speaker 00 And looking at whether they're meant to deceive us.
29:04 Speaker 08 Or to distract us.
29:05 Speaker 00 Or to disturb us.
29:07 Speaker 08 And our pledge is to help you spot the tricks of the verbal trait.
29:10 Speaker 00 But be one, this series does feature strong political language that some listeners may find an inverted pyramid of piffle.
29:16 Speaker 08 Strong message here from BBC Radio 4.
29:19 Speaker 00 Listen now on BBC Sounds.
29:25 Speaker 02 It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting.
29:30 Speaker 03 A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation.
29:34 Speaker 02 And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Mischa Glenny, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous Sojourner Truth (Radio Edit) Next Hernán Cortés and Malintzin (Radio Edit) Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated