Review of Arthur, King Of The Britons

Introduction

BBC documentaries are amongst the best in the world, generally good subject matter and interesting. The BBC have a good track record in the recent past with historical series such as Auschwitz, Time Watch, etc, but these were all subjects in the recent past with a lot of available documentation for researchers to pore over.

Arthur: King of the Britons is one of those documentaries where we don`t have the answers so the whole point of the hours viewing is to discover answers to questions posed by the narrator. In this case, the narrator is the late but highly esteemed actor Richard Harris. Now probably better known as Professor Dumbledor in the Harry Potter series, Harris actually played King Arthur in the 1967 cinematic version of the musical Camelot.

Wandering around Britain in his trainers, Harris takes us to Salisbury, Cadbury Hill, Glastonbury and Tintagel amongst other places in the search for the truth about King Arthur. Who was he? Did he really exist? Where does the myth end and the real story begin?

Video

A nice combination of location footage and CGI, albeit the simple sort of CGI you see on Time Team or a Lawrence Rees documentary. Editing can be a little MTV-ish in style, particularly the numerous cuts to our illustrious narrator.

Audio

Stereo soundtrack with subtitles.

Features

I think they must have gone into the lake with Excalibur…

Conclusion

Who goes there?

It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!

Pull the other one!

This is how I currently think of the legendary King Arthur. For those unlucky enough not to recognise those immortal lines, they are from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My previous vision of Arthur was of the glossy highly polished armour wearing Arthur of John Boorman`s Excalibur. I saw that film around about the same time I was studying Tennyson`s Mort d`Arthur in 3rd Form English Lit back in the early 80`s. Most texts available at that time, available to school kids anyway, promoted the idea of Arthur as a medieval knight King who promoted chivalry and gathered the bravest knights in the land (including the little known Brave Sir Robin, obviously) around the fabled Round Table.

Of course, it all seems a little out of place now. Medieval Britain is well documented and its unlikely that a King of this magnitude could have lived during these times and not taken his place amongst the more well known line of Royalty, so who was he?

The reasonably argued crux of this documentary is that Arthur was a real King but that he lived in the Dark Ages where there were no chivalrous knights and certainly no armour of the sort depicted on film or TV screen. The problem is that there is no real documentary evidence of any sort to back this up, it`s all really conjecture. It`s well presented conjecture though, and Harris is an engaging narrator. Whilst it`s hardly a definitive documentary that proves who Arthur was and where he lived, it`s an intriguing glimpse into what may have been.

The legend of King Arthur sits alongside Robin Hood as folklore heroes who are claimed by the English with no real proof of their existence bar stories handed down through the ages. We want both to exist, we need both to exist. They are as much a part of English Heritage as St George, the Vikings and William The Conqueror.

The mystery surrounding Arthur was always the stuff of legend, certainly the stuff to inspire an impressionable school kid. There has always been the mystery of the Holy Grail, where Camelot was, and where that resting place of Arthur is (legend insists he is merely sleeping and will awaken when England needs him).

In recent years though, the mystery surrounding Arthur has been eclipsed by another mystery handed down through the ages but rarely questioned. Started by the authors of such books as Holy Blood, Holy Grail amongst other, the bloodline of Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdelene have now captured the imaginations of the public in the same way that Arthur used to. On the eve of the release of the film adaption of Dan Brown`s Da Vinci Code, it is nice to be reminded of some more home grown mysteries…