Talking Location With .. A E Chandler: Knights, King Arthur, BRITAIN

#TalkingLocationWith ...  A E Chandler, author of Knights of the Roundish Table – Knights, King Arthur, and Britain

King Arthur is most closely associated with the setting of Camelot. Historians disagree on which modern location could have been Camelot, or whether it may have been entirely imagined. Writing the Arthurian spoof Knights of the Roundish Table – a mix of humour, historical fiction, and fantasy – I focused on locations we know to be grounded in reality, which in turn helps ground a story where the court magician conjures a supposedly fearsome creature to fight against the king’s enemies, and that creature turns out to be a purple rodent with six legs.

I was fortunate to attend the University of Nottingham for my MA in Medieval Studies. When I wasn’t researching or writing papers, I was travelling around to locations featuring in my bestselling non-spoof historical novel The Scarlet Forest: A Tale of Robin Hood, and in the just-released Knights of the Roundish Table. One of the first places I visited was Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire. The buildings at this fantastic site are archaeological reconstructions that explore how the ancient Britons and Romano-British lived. These are the cultures that originally birthed the Arthurian legend. Butser Ancient Farm allows exploration of round huts with thatched roofs, and a painted Roman villa, as well as the opportunity to meet ancient breeds of four-horned sheep. (Not quite as rare as six-legged purple rodents, but close.) Experimental archaeology like this can put us back in spaces that haven’t existed above the surface for centuries, and provide invaluable knowledge about life in past cultures and environments.

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1995 Butser Ancient Farms reconstructed huts of ancient Britons

Another early destination, where it’s worth spending multiple days, was the city of Winchester. The importance of this ancient capital spans the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Norman cultures. The Winchester Round Table is iconic for English medievalists. It is housed in the also thirteenth century Great Hall of King Henry III, and shows how the Arthurian legend’s popularity has endured through the centuries and invasions Britain has experienced. The garden outside recreates what queens Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile (Henry III’s mother and wife respectively) would have enjoyed. These royals feature in my first novel The Scarlet Forest. As much time has passed between the origins of the Arthurian and Robin Hood legends as has passed between Robin Hood’s origin and now. Just as Winchester has been influenced by a succession of cultures, so has the Arthurian legend. Knights of the Roundish Tablehighlights Celtic tales alongside the perhaps more recognized Arthurian tales from the medieval period, many of which have combined into and survived as the legend we know today.

2000 a breed of four-horned sheep that can still be found at Butser Ancient Farms

Speaking of survival, another must-see location during my university travels was Glastonbury. Here medieval monks, hoping to increase pilgrimage tourism, claimed to have discovered King Arthur’s grave. The hoax makes sense, in that Glastonbury Tor, a hill with far-reaching views and the ruins of a medieval church tower, has been pointed to as the mystical Isle of Avalon, which Arthur visited after his final battle. Glastonbury Abbey, now in ruins, is the site of at least one genuine royal burial: that of the later Anglo-Saxon king Edgar the Peaceable in 975. (Fun fact: my cat was named after this king.) Knights of the Roundish Table, when taking on the crucial storyline of the king’s demise, was a bit challenging to write. Afterall, it’s a humourous book, but I’m pleased with how that part turned out, staying both respectful and funny even with more serious subject matter.

Rocky Mountains

The location I visited that most influenced Knights of the Roundish Table, though, was the Rocky Mountains. Notably, these are not actually in Britain, but in North America. It was during road trips, driving west out to Vancouver Island, when two of the eight tales in the book were written. So, while the Britons almost certainly never visited the Rocky Mountains, this is the scenery that stands in for the mountain ranges of Wales. Seeing the clouds part through the peaks to reveal the sun, or a group of houses huddled at one end of an enormous valley, or a plywood castle hoping to lure in tourists have all impacted scenes in Knights of the Roundish Table. Where Britain has been occupied by people over almost every inch since the days when people lived alongside ancient sheep like the ones still at Butser Farm, there are still places in the Rockies where no human has ever stepped foot, and that feel of venturing into wilderness is still present. Even on a road trip.

From myself, the four-horned sheep, the six-legged purple rodents, and the Knights of the Roundish Table, safe and stunning travels: A E CHANDLER

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