The Author
I’ve always loved to escape into a good book. Curling up in a comfy chair, opening to the first page and savouring the moment you’re transported to a far-off place or time, to share the adventures of characters you grow to care about like your closest friends.
And the world of fiction is so vast and all encompassing. Whether it’s those first tentative steps into the wardrobe in search of Narnia or charging with the Rohirrim across Middle Earth’s Pelennor Fields. Perhaps it’s surviving the brutal Hunger Games of the futuristic Panem or rooting for Harry and his friends as they struggle to defeat Voldemort. (Who hasn’t wished for a trusty spell and a vanishing cloak … and an owl?) It’s that feeling of not wanting to put the book down, too impatient to wait till tomorrow to find out if the Maze Runner will escape the fiendish trap or if War Horse will ever see his Devon home again. The thrill of taking a few hours away and immersing yourself in the triumphs and perils of people – and animals – you’d love to meet.
We read to be diverted, entertained, informed, moved. To laugh, to cry, to feel jeopardy, anger, or a sense of fulfilment at a happy ending, sorrow at a sad one, or satisfaction when the baddie is vanquished. Reading is precious because the stories belong to all of us and yet the way they engage us is unique to the individual.
With such a rich world already out there waiting to be explored or revisited, why bother to become an author? I guess it’s because I’ve been inspired by those other stories, those other writers, to tell my own tales. In that sense, writing offers an even purer form of escapism – because I’m in charge.
Well, to an extent. It’s funny how characters can take control as they make their own decisions and plot out their own lives.
So, where I come from (Devon, as it happens), what I’ve done up till now (various proper jobs with official-sounding names) and what my interests are (maybe another time) are not as important as the stories generated by my overactive imagination. I’m grateful you’ve visited my page, hope you’ll enjoy my books, and perhaps along the way be inspired to write your own stories. Because I do believe that everyone has a book in them if they put their mind to it…
King Arthur: real or imagined…
and does it matter?
As far back as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by history and the tales of Arthur and his knights. Of course, many people will question whether he justifies the word historical; and virtually all academic historians now regard him as belonging to that misty otherworld of folklore and legend.
But I wanted him to be real.
Gallos by Rubin Eynon (photo by MonikaP)
Early reading taught me that he was a Romano British war leader and that his likely base – Camelot? – would have been a turf-and-timber stronghold atop a hill like South Cadbury in Somerset, not a soaring stone edifice as so often depicted in the movies. If I’m honest, that was a bit disappointing; but Arthur still filled a gap in my imagination.
The more I read about him, the more I came to realise the paradoxical problem he created. His popularity has led succeeding generations to claim him as theirs, dressing him and his companions in their own styles of war and giving them behaviours that spoke to contemporary audiences and tastes. In doing so, any real root to Arthur’s story has been lost.
Real or imagined, though, there is no doubting his influence on our culture and literature over the last fifteen centuries. Like the later Robin Hood, Arthur is a towering figure in the British consciousness. Side-by-side with the familiar companions he picked up along the way – Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, all later additions – he has continued to exercise a powerful sway.
The evolution of Arthur continued in the fanciful Medieval French Romances and led an imprisoned Lancastrian knight, Sir Thomas Malory, to write his prose masterpiece, The Morte D’Arthur. From here, the legend blossomed into the poetry of Tennyson, through the fantasies of Twain and T S White, to the magical realms of Stephen Lawhead and the gritty reality of Bernard Cornwell (my own favourite retelling of the story).
Thus, the idea of Arthur lives on.
Was he a real person? In the end, it probably doesn’t matter because, either way, his influence continues. As evidence, type his name into the movie database IMDB, or have a look at Wikipedia’s list of works based on Arthurian legends.
The jury may remain out on his very existence, but, as the renowned British historian, Michael Wood, has said of Arthur’s legends, ‘Together they add up to the greatest theme in the literature of the British Isles.’
When you consider it this way, maybe the Once and Future King never sailed away to Avalon at all, but stayed with us, through thick and thin, keeping up with changes in society as his story developed down the centuries. An enduring hero for all times.
Having just suggested, then, that he never left, it might seem strange that I’ve focused my own contribution on the most famous cliff-hanger of all: how and why will Arthur return? For me, though, perhaps that’s the most important part of his story.
And it’s why Asha Knight was born.