King Arthur Pendragon

EXPLODING THE MYTHS
In which King Arthur rights a few wrongs

Knight in matt black armour arrives, cackles evilly and slices off the head of the lead peasant. Within seconds a second knight, bearing the cross of Saint George on his breast gallops up with a massive broadsword and dismembers the man in black.He takes off his shiny helmet to reveal beautifully white teeth, expertly permed hair and a beard straight from the costume department. King Arthur, Hollywood-style.

The reality, according to the man himself, is somewhat different. A Pendragon, or warrior chieftain, Arthur's roots can be traced back to the Dark Ages. Armour was still a long way off when the knights of the round table traversed the country doing battle with foreign invaders. It's a safe bet that the Arthur of the day was poorly dressed, poorly fed and never had a perm in his life.

The myth of the romantic knight was a French invention. They changed him from warlord to knight. Then Hollywood took over and we ended up with Scotsman Sean Connery playing the English King. 'I reviewed the movie First Knight for the Sun and laughed my head off,' said Arthur. 'I've never seen such rubbish in my life!'

There are other bones of contention too. Many sites have been claimed as Camelot, the mystical home of the Knights of the Round Table. 'Camelot as a place just didn't exist,' said Arthur. 'The nature of the knights at that time was very nomadic. Camelot was a caravan, if you like to call it that. It was a gathering of the King's followers. As long as the King and a couple of his men were gathered together it was enough to form a Camelot.

'Many of the supposed Camelot sites are hill forts built for defensive purposes. Arthur would get to the scene of impending battle and tell the locals where they needed to strengthen defence. They would rush off and build a fort and then the stories would start about how the King had put down his roots. 'The scholars can look as long and as hard as they like but they'll never find Camelot, because it just doesn't exist.'