The Duke and the Decoy

This illustrated book tells the story of 'King' Arthur. Firstly it explains the history of the 5th century in northern Europe, and the background to the disasters that befell the region in the post-Roman world. It describes the conflicts at the end of that century, in which the British forces were commanded by Arthur, both in insular Britain and in its colony in Brittany. However, the 'story of the story' is almost as interesting as the underlying history, and the trail be which the legends reached the medieval public leads back to the Brittany of the 10th and 11th centuries. A gay Bishop of Dol played a key part in the transmission of the tales of Arthur, and also of the near contemporaneous legend of the Holy Grail. The stories were then embellished by the Normans as propaganda, to win over the British people after the Conquest, and the romanticised version became popular throughout medieval Europe. However, when Brittany was being absorbed into France at the end of the 15th century, the legends became politically highly charged. Arthur, a potent symbol of Breton independence, had been obscured behind the figure of a trivial Breton saint, the 'decoy' of the book's title, and it suited many that he should remain hidden. This charade was discovered by a young Henry Tudor, during his 14 years of exile in Brittany, and when he returned to England to win his throne from Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, he brought the secret with him. Just why he felt compelled to maintain the fiction in public is one of the many fascinating aspects of the story.