Medievalbookshop — ACG0094 Reid, Arthur the Dragon King

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Scanned image of the book’s front cover

Howard Reid.
Arthur the Dragon King: The Barbaric Roots of Britain’s Greatest Legend.
Published London: Headline, 2001.
ISBN 0747275572;
ISBN-13: 9780747275572.
Binding: hardback, perfect bound.
Printer: Mackays of Chatham.
Size: 160×240×23mm.
Page count: text xii,244pp; plates 8pp.
Overall condition good: an unused copy with some shop wear; dustjacket a little scuffed, its edges and corners ruffled; some foxing on the page edges, pages a bit yellowed with age.

This item £6.00
P&P inc. within the UK
(delivery outside the UK not currently available)

Weight without packaging: 536g.

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Over the years countless historians have sought the truth behind the story of King Arthur. Many have produced plausible but ultimately unsatisfactory hypotheses, locating the Arthur story in Cornwall, in Scotland or in Wales. But now Howard Reid’s radical reassessment turns received wisdom on its head. Does the King Arthur story actually have its roots much further afield, in the steppes of central Asia, with the mounted warrior nomads whose extraordinary culture predates our own by many centuries? Can we, in fact, trace the Arthur legend, so crucial to our ideas of civilisation, to the very people history usually dismisses as barbarians?

Given that dark age Britain inherited the twin legacies of the Celts and the Romans, one might logically expect to find the trappings of the Arthur story — swords in stones, ladies in lakes, chivalrous knights on horseback — in the myths and legends of those traditions. Such narrative details are conspicuously absent. However when we begin to examine the sophisticated culture of the nomadic warriors — the Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans — of central Asia, parallels begin to emerge. And when you further realise that these great horsemen first came to northern Europe around AD 175, you begin to think that the Arthur story doesn’t look so strange after all …

Arthur the Dragon King provides a provocative new theory on the reality behind a story we all think we know. Brilliantly argued and full of fascinating detail, it will change the way you think about the ‘once and future king’ once and for all.

Contents: Mighty shadow; Arthur’s world — Celtic Britain; A real Arthur? — the evidence; Dreams of Arthur — medieval literature; The horse-warriors; The steppe world; Melting pot; Dawn of chivalry; Afterword — points east.

Illustrations: 8 pages of colour plates
Maps & plans: 3

Notes: no
Tables: no
Genealogies: no
Chronology: no
Glossary: no
Bibliography: 6pp
Index: yes

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