Books like King Arthur

Norma Lorre Goodrich’s main pursuit in “King Arthur” is to uphold the historicity of Arthur the man, as well as to identify the true localities of his kingdom. Traditionally, Arthur’s seat has been placed in southern England, but Goodrich builds an extremely compelling case for putting Arthur’s realm in southern Scotland and North Umbria. If you find ancient British place names magical, as I do, much of the drama of this book will come from Goodrich’s efforts to unlock the landscape of the King Arthur legends by combing through the medieval and renaissance iterations of these stories. Goodrich academically teases apart the extant King Arthur manuscripts to build her case, and just when things begin to become just a little too dry, she injects a whiff of Arthurian enchantment into her analyses. Examples of some of the details I found particularly exciting included: • Lancelot’s name is most likely a frenchified phonetic translation of Anguselus, who was a Scottish king and blood relative of Arthur• Guinevere is the ancient version of Jennifer, and Guinevere was probably actually named Guinhumara and was a fiercely bellicose Pictish queen with her own standing army separate from Arthur’sThis book is for you if you enjoy an Arthurian cocktail of academic sleuthery, etymology, and legend-cum-history.