Man and Myth, Reassessed.
When historians have sought out the historical King Arthur, they have often found images of themselves. English, Welsh and Scottish researchers have found English, Welsh and Scottish Arthurs. Here at last is a different story - one which turns received wisdom on its head. In this book, Howard Reid, film maker and anthropologist, leads an extraordinary investigation into the legend of King Arthur.
As Dark Age Britain was divided between the twin legacies of the Celts and the departed Romans, one might reasonably expect to find the trappings of King Arthur's story - swords in stones, round tables, and chivalrous knights - in their myths and legends, but they are conspicuously absent. The origins of these essentially Arthurian conventions lie much further afield, in the culture of the nomadic warrior peoples of central Asia: the Scythians, the Sarmatians and the Alans.
This extraordinarily sophisticated, equestrian culture has been widely dismissed as "barbarian". In fact, it contained elements of democracy and sexual equality unparalleled at the time and its people created some of the most stunning artefacts ever uncovered. Ironically, we can trace the legend of Arthur, so central to our ideas of civilisation, to the heart of those people we have historically most despised as barbarians.
