Books

Briton

‘When we were here before Badon we held feasts for all the cavalry in those fields. And the kings of all the Welsh kingdoms sat here, and planned the final destruction of the degenerate Saxons.’

Arthwyr stopped and lowered himself onto one of the small stone platforms. It made a convenient seat. ‘I only wish it had been final,’ he said.


The sixth century is the darkest, most unknowable period in British history. From the sudden end of the Roman occupation to the eventual establishment of a new Anglo-Saxon order, the people of Celtic Britain recorded almost nothing of their times. What little we do know generally comes from unreliable and contradictory sources or from partisan commentators – like Gildas and Bede – who usually have their own axe to grind.

Yet this is also the period that gives rise to the most ubiquitous fantasy in British story-telling: the legend of King Arthur. The first written Arthur only appears in the twelfth century; and many of the most familiar ingredients have more to do with medieval chivalry than sub-Roman survival – but the roots of the Arthurian myth are embedded in the shadowy soil of the sixth century.

If Arthur existed at all, he existed then – a tribal warlord who briefly succeeded in holding back the Saxon advance in the vacuum left by the escaping Romans.

Briton is about that kind of Arthur – an old man clinging to memories in a forgotten corner of the British Isles: a world of wandering tinminers, endemic sickness, and mysteriously darkening skies. It is also the home of the crippled swineherd Catt - a boy set apart by a deformed body and a strange intuition. Pigboy and warlord, separate as sea and earth; until a sudden storm tips a wandering monk and his companions onto the shore close to Arthwyr’s winter fort.

What unfolds, as the warlord is persuaded to take on one final adventure, is a story scarred by revenge and warmed by love; devoid of romantic later embellishments like Lancelot, Camelot, and the Round Table; and set against a vivid backdrop of emerging Christianity and crumbling power politics in a dark and often brutal age.

Briton is available in paperback, for £7.99 inc. UK postage. Information about orderingcan be found on my shop page here.