For centuries, nobody has known whether King Arthur existed or is mythical. But the problem can now be solved. So said the speaker Andrew Breeze whose analysis of the earliest chronicles shows Arthur as a warrior in what is now southern Scotland. He was fighting battles against other Britons in the terrible famine inducing volcanic winter of 536-7, and dying a hero’s death near Castlesteads on Hadrian’s Wall.

Andrew was educated in Kent and at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He has taught at the University of Navarre, Pamplona, since 1987. He has also researched and published widely, mostly on the history of early Britain.

Andrew displayed a manuscript written in Latin about 1100 AD transcribed from a Welsh document of about 830 AD. The document was the notorious “chapter 56”. He described this as “the most difficult historical problem of the last 1000 years” on which “rivers of ink have been spilled trying to decipher”.

The famed twelve battles of Arthur were picked out, and Andrew explained using his linguistic knowledge how all but one took place in what is now southern Scotland or northern England.  The odd one out was in southwest England, but his researches show that the date of this battle does not match the period when Arthur was active. Nowhere in this document is Arthur referred to as a king.

Then in 1130, the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth turned Arthur, the heroic northern army leader, into a southern King based at Tintagel. Some of his Knights of the Round Table are based on real people from southwest England and Wales. Andrew’s view is that Geoffrey of Monmouth embellished his flowery account to achieve a local interest “best seller”.

Andrew concludes that Arthur was a real person and not a myth. He was a heroic warrior, but not a king. He was a northerner and not a southerner.

In her vote of thanks Maureen Bell said the talk was an example of history being as good as a detective novel.