Guy Halsall

This is one of those books were I find it hard to say if I liked it or not. On the one hand, I disagree with some of Halsall's major conclusions (and in at least one case I'd say subsequent genetic work has proven him wrong and me right), on the other it was certainly an interesting read, making me think and discuss the subject with fellow mil-hist enthusiasts. I'm definitely happy to have read it.

So I guess it's a book to read if you want something thought-provoking rather than something show more definitive. (Not that I think there is something definitive to read on the subject.) show less

How to get your doctorate in Arthuriana (I prefer Arthurology) in one amazing book. This book is not for the faint of heart or the casual Arthurian reader. If you love King Arthur and the history and myth surrounding him, you will find no better reference book. Broken into four distinct sections and subdivided therein to help you move around the book, if need be, this book is an extremely well written in depth study of one of Great Britain's most illustrated knights. This includes both real show more or fictional characters. Legends, the stories behind the legends and variations of the legends can be found in these pages. The Song of Roland was a great story, Homer's Iliad and Odyssesy were epic poems and this is an epic work just waiting for true Arthurian lovers to read, chew over, and banter about with other likewise lovers. You can always use this book as a reference, but don't attempt a full read of this book unless you really mean it. Like Tolkien's Silmarillion with his in depth study of Middle Earth, Worlds of Arthur by Guy Halsall is a full blown thesis into the world of King Arthur. I loved it!! show less

There is a lot of good information in this book, but I'm afraid it doesn't do what it sets out to do, and I'm afraid it is aimed at entirely the wrong audience.

Halsall states in the introduction that his goal is to write a book for non-academics that debunks the ideas found in most books about Arthur that are aimed at a popular audience. Bookstores are full of books that claim to tell the truth about the historical Arthur, and many of them claim to have uncovered new and exciting show more information. The book that Halsall says he is going to write needs to be written: we need a book for a popular audience that explains how little we know about King Arthur and explains why those other books are wrong.

Unfortunately, this is not that book.

I should point out that I am not part of Halsall's intended audience: I have an academic background, and my PhD dissertation uses a lot of the same sources that Halsall uses in this book. So it is quite possible that I am underestimating Halsall's intended audience.

Having said that, I think Halsall's intended audience is going to be very disappointed with this book, primarily because the title gives the wrong impression. In the first chapters, Halsall describes all of the sources we have for this period, and points out that they say basically nothing about Arthur. Then, for the rest of the book, he talks about new interpretations of the late Roman/early Anglo-Saxon period in Britain.

Since the book is titled "The Worlds of Arthur", and since he claims that he is going to provide information for Arthurian enthusiasts, people are going to expect some information about Arthur in this book, when there is none. Halsall's point is a very important one to make: his point is that the historical sources say absolutely nothing reliable about Arthur, and the quest for a historical Arthur is futile. It is very important to make that point to a popular audience, and Halsall makes it well.... but if this is going to be an Arthurian book, then the rest of the book should really talk about why people continue to search for a historical Arthur, or offer more detailed refutations of other books that claim to have found a historical Arthur.

Another major problem with this book is that Halsall assumes that his audience has read enough about Arthur to know that if there was a historical Arthur, he existed in the 5th or 6th century. I don't think that's a safe assumption. When most people think of Arthur, they think of the high Middle Ages, with shining armor and jousting. I think a lot of readers will have absolutely no clue why Halsall is going on about the 5th century. He also provides no historical background: the straw man he is fighting for most of the book is the idea that Britain was heavily Romanized, that Anglo-Saxons came in from the east and fought their way west, and that Britain became English instead of Roman. However, he never provides that background: readers who don't already have some knowledge of Dark Age Britain will have no idea what Halsall is arguing against.

I also wish Halsall would engage more directly with some of the books he argues against in his first chapters. He is refuting claims made by those who think they have found the historical Arthur, yet he never mentions any of these authors or books by name. It's very polite of him to be so circumspect about the people he is lambasting, but I'm not sure that his audience will understand the subtlety.

Finally, I think most of this book will be of far more interest to budding academics than to a popular audience, so Halsall does his readers a disservice by not providing footnotes and other apparatus that will be useful to his academic audience.

I really wanted to like this book. But I think it's a classic example of the giant rift between academic history and popular history. We need more academics writing popular history: a lot of the history books written for a general audience are just bad history. But academics don't seem to know how to write for a popular audience, and this book shows exactly what happens when they try. Halsall starts with a topic that will be exciting to a popular audience, and then proceeds to bore them to death by not providing enough background material, and by not doing what he promises to do in the opening pages. show less

This feels like a history of early Medieval Britain, with Arthur thrown in solely for the name. The book had almost nothing to say about anything Arthurian, and in fact was largely negative (this theory is incorrect, this evidence is doubtful, that scholar is wrong, etc.). This means that it comes to no conclusions, managing to be very specific and very vague at the same time. Some of the historical analysis was very interesting, but Halsall's refusal to be sure of anything was frustrating.