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A review by adperfectamconsilium
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Geoffrey of Monmouth
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Readathon challenge.
Prompt completed: read a book inspired by the old stories of your land or your ancestors lands.
So for this prompt I chose a history book that was written in Latin in the 12th century. As you do 🤣
I say history but there weren't many written records for Geoffrey to base his manuscripts on at that time.
So what we get is a mixture of mythology, folklore, legend, fantasy/fiction from Geoffrey, and if you squint you may find a smidgeon of history as well.
Covering the period from about 1000 or so years BC through to approximately 700AD we get tales of kings, battles, civil wars, invasions and prophecies.
We start rather surprisingly with the aftermath of the Trojan War! Brutus & his people come to occupy the Island of Albion. Their deeds included defeating giants (Gogmagog makes an appearance) & founding New Troy, a city that will change it's name a few times before becoming London.
From there we get the coming of the Romans, the rise of House Constantine, many kings including Vortigern, Uther Pendragon & most notably King Arthur who gets the longest section of all.
Before Arthur, Merlin makes an appearance & we get a chapter of his prophecies.
The book ends with the domination of the Saxons. It took several invasions before they succeeded with a little help from the Britons fighting each other. There's very little peace in the whole of the history.
I was surprised by how often Cornwall was mentioned. Dukes and kings of Cornwall played a huge part and Arthur took up with Guinevere at Tintagel Castle.
Perhaps I'm biased but I'm of the opinion that this particular section is Cold Hard Fact😃. Well done Geoffrey on the rigorous research 🤣
Geoffrey himself may be a little pompous and unsurprisingly racist but it's a highly entertaining account and it's hilarious that he gives key players speeches as if it's exactly what they said when most of the time there's little proof that some of them even existed.
Influencing everyone from Malory to Shakespeare to Hilary Mantel the references to Geoffrey keep on coming.
Prompt completed: read a book inspired by the old stories of your land or your ancestors lands.
So for this prompt I chose a history book that was written in Latin in the 12th century. As you do 🤣
I say history but there weren't many written records for Geoffrey to base his manuscripts on at that time.
So what we get is a mixture of mythology, folklore, legend, fantasy/fiction from Geoffrey, and if you squint you may find a smidgeon of history as well.
Covering the period from about 1000 or so years BC through to approximately 700AD we get tales of kings, battles, civil wars, invasions and prophecies.
We start rather surprisingly with the aftermath of the Trojan War! Brutus & his people come to occupy the Island of Albion. Their deeds included defeating giants (Gogmagog makes an appearance) & founding New Troy, a city that will change it's name a few times before becoming London.
From there we get the coming of the Romans, the rise of House Constantine, many kings including Vortigern, Uther Pendragon & most notably King Arthur who gets the longest section of all.
Before Arthur, Merlin makes an appearance & we get a chapter of his prophecies.
The book ends with the domination of the Saxons. It took several invasions before they succeeded with a little help from the Britons fighting each other. There's very little peace in the whole of the history.
I was surprised by how often Cornwall was mentioned. Dukes and kings of Cornwall played a huge part and Arthur took up with Guinevere at Tintagel Castle.
Perhaps I'm biased but I'm of the opinion that this particular section is Cold Hard Fact😃. Well done Geoffrey on the rigorous research 🤣
Geoffrey himself may be a little pompous and unsurprisingly racist but it's a highly entertaining account and it's hilarious that he gives key players speeches as if it's exactly what they said when most of the time there's little proof that some of them even existed.
Influencing everyone from Malory to Shakespeare to Hilary Mantel the references to Geoffrey keep on coming.