The Holy Thorn, of course, would have existed at Ynys Wydryn (Glastonbury) if we believe the legend that Joseph of Arimathaea brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury in AD 63, though that story only really emerges in the twelfth century so I suspect my inclusion of the Thorn in The Winter King is one of my many deliberate anachronisms. When I began the book I was determined to exclude every anachronism, including the embellishments of Chretien de Troyes, but such purity would have excluded Lancelot, Galahad, Excalibur and Camelot, let alone such figures as Merlin, Morgan and Nimue. Did Merlin exist? The evidence for his life is even less compelling than that for Arthur, and it is highly improbable that the two co-existed, yet they are inseparable and I found it impossible to leave Merlin out. Much anachronism could, however, happily be jettisoned, thus the fifth-century Arthur does not wear plate armour nor carry a mediaeval lance. He has no round table, though his warriors (not knights) would, in Celtic fashion, often have feasted in a circle on the ground. His castles would have been made of earth and wood, not from towering and turreted stone, and I doubt, sadly, that any arm clad in white samite, mystic and wonderful, rose from a misty mere to snatch his sword into eternity, though it is almost certain that the personal treasures of a great leader would, on his death, be cast into a lake as an offering to the Gods.
Most of the characters’ names in the book are drawn from records of the fifth and sixth centuries, but about the people attached to those names we know next to nothing, just as we know very little about the post-Roman kingdoms of Britain indeed modern histories even disagree on the number of kingdoms and their names. Dumnonia existed, as did Powys, while the narrator of the tale, Derfel (pronounced, in Welsh fashion, Dervel) is identified in some of the early tales as one of Arthur’s warriors and it is noted that he later became a monk, but we know nothing else about him. Others, like Bishop Sansum, undoubtedly existed and remain known today as saints, though it seems precious little virtue was required of those early holy men.
The Winter King is, then, a tale of the Dark Ages in which legend and imagination must compensate for the dearth of historical records. About the only thing of which we can be fairly certain is the broad historical background: a Britain in which Roman towns, Roman roads, Roman villas and some Roman manners are still present, but also a Britain fast being destroyed by invasion and civil strife. Some of the Britons had already abandoned the fight and settled in Armorica, Brittany, which explains the persistence of the Arthurian tales in that part of France. But for those Britons who remained in their beloved island it was a time when they desperately sought salvation, both spiritual and military, and into that unhappy place came a man who, at least for a time, repelled the enemy. That man is my Arthur, a great warlord and a hero who fought against impossible odds to such effect that even fifteen hundred years later his enemies love and revere his memory.
Bernard Cornwell was born in London and raised in Essex, but now lives in America with his wife. He is the author of the hugely successful Sharpe series, set during the Peninsular War, which has been adapted for television starring Scan Bean as Richard Sharpe, and the Starbuck series, set during the American Civil War. His contemporary thrillers, Wildtrack, Sea Lord, Crackdown, Stormchild and Scoundrel, have all been bestsellers for Michael Joseph.
The Winter King is the first volume in a trilogy about Arthur, The Warlord Chronicles. Two further volumes will be published: The Enemy of God and The Warlord.
The End