Andy points me in the direction of a Guardian interview with Julian Cope, who was our muse and guide through the Men With Big Stones tour last year. (_Still_ haven’t done the field notes. I am so slack.) This year is “Men With Big Thrones”—we depart for Cornwall in the first week of August in order to discover the secrets of King Arthur, whence came Excalibur, the true location of Avalon, and whether Newquay Steam Beer tastes as good as I remember it. We have, currently, no guide, no muse, no canonical reference work from which to draw inspiration for this grand tour of Arthurian history. Any suggestions are gratefully accepted, as long as they acknowledge that Arthur was in Cornwall—recommendations for books that postulate a Camelot somewhere in the East Midlands will not be entertained. Perhaps our best course is to watch Excalibur repeatedly, although when Andy suggested that I thought he was talking about the film with the flying sword. That, of course, was Hawk the Slayer, which is nothing to do with Arthur at all.
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Peter J.
Check out "Jack Whyte's":http://www.camulod.com/ "A Dream of Eagles" series, a historical fiction take on Arthur et al. Starts with the Romans in "The Skystone" and Arthur is born somewhere around book 3.
Tom
I have a copy of The quest for Arthur's Britain / Geoffrey Ashe ... [et al]. London : Paladin, 1971. ix, 238 p. [64] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 20 cm. I'll send you a copy of chapter 3, which is entitled Romance and reality in Cornwall / C.A. Ralegh Radford.. Quite scholarly, and talks a lot about Tintagel and Arthur's birth, though not too much about Camelot, sadly. It seems the (Arthurian) story of Tristan/Tristram involves Cornwall a lot too.
as days pass by » Blog Archive » Men With Bigger Romans
[...] Last weekend the Gentlemen’s Philosophical Society of Elvet travelled to York for the Men With Bigger Romans tour, this year’s installment of the Men With Big (Stones | Thrones | Moans) holiday fact-finding field trip extravaganza series. It was glorious. I have discovered that York Brewery make excellent beer, that Sp. Manlius Fronto (or Tim to his friends) is better at Smuggle (caveat PDF) than I am, even if you steal half his money while he’s in the toilet, and that the Romans left a lot of stuff lying around the lovely city of Eboracum before they ran off to become the Byzantine Empire. Gn. Quinctilius Praetextatus took some pictures of the GPSoE in his official role as secretary of the Society, so good work fella. We’re doing this again next year. [...]
I will use a black countryism because for once it is totally appropriate. You are going round the Wrekin here.
King Arthur wouldn't have lived in Cornwall, until the advent of pasties and surfing the only people who lived in Cornwall spent most of their time underground and seeing pixes (probably on account of the radiation doses they got underground from the granite and radion)
Camalot is a lot closer to home, The Wrekin. Lots of evidence to support this (at least as much as anywhere else) and at least it's closer to where Bran and all the other celtic heros lived and where most of the romantic middle age tales get there heros from ;-)
It's the furthest easterly point redefended by a tribe that could have been the origin of some of the hero stories with good views of the midlands from all sides, and a clear run back to the Shropshire and Welsh hills with hundreds of places named after Arthur. Plus the lake in the middle of the wrekin and a couple of other reoccupied bronze age forts is stuffed full of stone, bronze and iron age votive offerings, surely these are where Excalibur will be found ;-)
The only people that placed him in the west country where monks after a bit of dosh and hardup famililes looking to restore there castles, oh and let's not forget kings who wished to be seen as the sucessor to a king that never ruled a nation and probably never ruled a village of his own.
See the pasties, ice cream and beer are all good and Tintagel is a nice place. plus any excuse to see excalibur again ;-)