The first known reference to Arthur was from a Welsh monk writing in the 9th century, but he called Arthur a knight. Geoffrey of Monmouth picks up the story in 1138 and adds some historical context to the Arthurian legend and makes Arthur a king. Ironically many of the aspects most closely associated with Arthur, this famously British figure (the Holy Grail, the Lancelot-Guinevere affair) were actually written in France. Henry II of England and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine were ensorcelled with the legend and carried it to France, where courtiers at Eleanor’s famously romantic court of Aquitaine embellished the tales, adding intrigue and the MacGuffin of the Middle Ages, the Holy Grail.

Sir Thomas Malory then compiled these tales into Le Morte d’Arthur (the Death of Arthur) in 1485.  Lord Tennyson and T.H. White both stood on Malory’s shoulders when they wrote their Idylls of the King in the 19th century and The Once and Future King in the twentieth century, respectively. That brings us to the timeless Disney film, The Sword in the Stone (cue Higitus Figitus) and the somewhat less timeless but entertaining Julia Ormond-Sean Connery-Richard Gere First Knight and the strangely watchable Keira Knightley-Clive Owen-Ioan Gruffudd King Arthur (with Stannis Baratheon as Merlin!). Never forget Monty Python’s Spamalot or the classic Camelot musicals. With over a thousand years of portrayals, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the King Arthur legend on Western culture.