The tale of Arthur, the “once and future king”, is epic and timeless. With its key themes of magic, chivalric brotherhood, courtly love and the eternal quest (for the Holy Grail) set in a lost golden age, Arthur’s legend has become one of the most potent, successful and well-known stories in world mythology.

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Today, of course, there are two separate and discrete Arthurs: the fictional king, whose life is retold and reinvented for every generation; and the historical figure, whose story, we assume, originates in the chaos of post-Roman Britain, sometime in the fifth or sixth century.

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