Uncovering the Real King Arthur
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Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The story of King Arthur is perhaps one of the most famous in history, but for centuries now, the fabled king has been a mystery to academics.

So was his story of Camelot, Excalibur and Guinevere just an elaborate fairy tale? Or was he a real flesh and blood king? And if so, who was he and how different is the legendary Arthur from the reality?

The figure of Arthur in history is probably massively different from the romantic, ideal, medieval king that we see. There could well have been a warrior called a Welsh variation of Arthur. So it certainly seems that by the late 800s, these people who were writing these records of their own history believe Arthur to have been a very real historical figure.

He was actually more likely a soldier in common simple garb and living on a hill fort made out of wood, not in the fancy castle. He wasn't a hair-flowing, sort of Brad Pitt-ish kind of King Arthur. He was a tough dude, and he was acknowledged as a warrior and buried as a warrior. For centuries, King Arthur has remained a mystery. The site of his fabled Camelot, long forgotten, and the true location of his final resting place, shrouded in the mists of time.

But did he really exist? And if so, who was he and where was he from? King Arthur is a legendary British military leader of the late fifth and early sixth centuries who led his people at a time of, you know, great adversity against what appears to be the Saxon army and reinstilled sort of faith and independence in the land.

The King Arthur that most people think about is a man in a suit of armor on horseback wielding a big sword and so on. But in reality, he comes from something about 500 years at least before the suit of armor was invented. He's going to be wearing leather armor. He's going to be probably on foot leading a group of ex-Roman mercenaries. That's closer to the truth.

The mythologizing of King Arthur happened during the Middle Ages. So people imagined him to be a king or a warrior as they understood it, you know, in armor with a castle. The reality, of course, he would have been a Romano-British warrior. You know, he would have

It wouldn't have been a castle, it would have been a hill fort. They didn't have armor as such then, and maybe just a breastplate. We see these medieval romance writers really trying to make something more of the story than what it was. It was very romantic, wasn't it? That you had this king and this wonderful castle and the beautiful queen, the huge table where everyone came together. It's a great story, but it's not reality.

There are three main theories about who the historical Arthur really was. Some claim that he was a Dark Age king who lived down near Tintagel in Cornwall. Others say that he lived in Roman Britain on the English-Welsh borders and helped defeat the Saxons. And the third theory, which is the most famous, is that he lived in Glastonbury in the west of England and that he was buried in the grounds of its famous abbey.

Journalist Jamie Fexton is on the hunt to find the real historical King Arthur and has come to Glastonbury to start his search. Tor Webster is a local historian who takes people on tours of the main Arthurian sites in the area. He believes that King Arthur did live nearby and was buried here in Glastonbury Abbey for a period. This is a great place, Tor.

Yeah, it was the second largest and most affluent abbey in the whole of England at its time after Westminster. Is that right? Yeah, even sometimes more important than Westminster. So it was a very important site. This is said to be the site where King Arthur and Guinevere's bodies were discovered by the monks in 1191.

Why do we think it was actually there? Well, they found a plaque saying here lies King Arthur and Guinevere. So that was kind of proof to the monks that that was what they had discovered here. There was nothing buried with them that might suggest that? Not as far as I know apart from the plaque and the description also of how they were buried in historical... And why Glastonbury?

Well, it's believed that King Arthur was one of the early Christian kings. And this is where George of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother came and settled on this island, which in those days we believe called Innis Wittering. And they built the first ever Christian church here in 62 AD, the Wattle Church. Later on, the Saxons called it the Old Church. And then the abbey was built up around that Wattle Church. So it's very important to them. And there are no bones here now, right?

It's said that the the monks moved them in a great ceremony up to near the high altar in the great church and put them in in tombs there with black marble lids. Much of the Abbey has been destroyed over the years. First by King Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century and later just through neglect and the passage of time. What's left though

is one of England's most beautiful and enigmatic sites, and a fitting place for a royal burial. So we in the abbey now then. This is the high altar over here, and this is the site where the monks moved the bodies of King Arthur and his bride Guinevere, and in a big ceremony placed their bodies in two tombs, both with black marble lids.

So are the bones in here now? No, we believe that when the disillusionment of the abbey in 1539, they were most likely been moved around that time by the monks, that they might have taken a lot of the artifacts and quickly buried them somewhere else in the landscape here. So we don't really know what happened to them. You know, the industry,

of Arthur. It's huge, probably in the tens of millions. Movies, books, tours. And at Glastonbury today, you go there, I must say it's quite moving. You see the little plaque that says, "Here..." And it's very humble. It's not like a big sign. It's a tiny little plaque. "Here lies King Arthur and his wife Guinevere." And it's really rather moving and understated, which almost gives it a little bit of credibility. It's a shame it's fiction. When the monks of Glastonbury allegedly

found the coffin of Arthur and, as it's said, his second wife, Guinevere. They made a lot of money out of it, and to some extent Glastonbury still does because people know about this and it pulled in the pilgrims, pulls in the tourists now. But there was something very odd, I think, about the inscription anyway. It says, "Here lies the famous King Arthur with his second wife, Guinevere, here in the Isle of Avalon."

You would not, on the inscription of a royal tomb, say "the famous". For example, it doesn't say on Elizabeth I's tomb, "Here lies the famous Elizabeth I". I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's unsubtle and it's quite clearly invented. Why Glastonbury Abbey should be the Vale of Avalon? Very good question. Certainly in the 11th century, the monks did find two skeletons, a man and a woman.

they believed them to be Arthur and Guinevere. There isn't a shred of evidence to say that it was them, that that's where they were buried and that's where Arthur was taken. It's a jolly good story and it's made Glastonbury a tourist attraction for the best part of a thousand years and it sold a lot of ice creams.

The modern sort of Hollywood legend of Arthur originates sort of in the 12th and 13th century with the Grail romances and really commences with Mallory a few hundred years later putting the icing on the cake of the story. And each of them embellishes it in a different way. One of them adds,

Arthur has a wife, Guinevere, and he has a father, Uther Pendragon, and there's this chap named Merlin, and oh, here's Excalibur, and guess what? They all live in this amazing romantic place called Camelot. They each add a little bit to the story slowly, slowly, slowly to the point where it's the epic we know today.

Do you believe King Arthur and Guinevere were once buried here or do you think it's simply myth and legend? I think it's very possible that King Arthur and Guinevere are buried right here and that their bodies stayed there until the abbey was destroyed in 1539 and the monks moved their bodies to somewhere else in the landscape and buried there. But who knows? Your guess is as good as mine. In ancient times, there were no lottery grants. You had to get money from pilgrims and Glastonbury Abbey had burnt down.

A few years later, in 1191, they contrived to announce they found the bones of King Arthur and his wife. So it makes sense. They wanted money. They wanted pilgrims. They wanted to rebuild and expand their wonderful abbey.

The whole story of the monks finding King Arthur's bones and Guinevere's was, you know, a great marketing story. It brought people into the town. They could then rebuild their church after the fire. And we still see this kind of tourism existing today. People want to come and touch a bit of Arthur. They want to see where he was buried, when in actuality, he wasn't buried there. Great story, but not reality. For centuries, the truth about who the real King Arthur was has remained an enigmatic mystery.

Was he the dashing figure resplendent in shining armor, living in a large fairy tale castle and wielding his magic sword Excalibur? Or was he something entirely different, and did he really exist at all? Some claim that he was really a Dark Age king who lived in Cornwall. Others say that he lived in Roman Britain on the English-Welsh borders and helped defeat the Saxons.

But the most popular theory is that he lived in Glastonbury in the west of England and that he was buried in the grounds of its famous abbey. Overlooking the town is a famous landmark called the Tor, which is an ancient tower marking the site of an earlier church. It sits at the top of a hill over 500 feet high from where you can see across these ancient lands.

So what was significant about the tour then? Well, it's a great landscape marker and people say that over a hundred ley lines converge on here creating a very special energy. So is this Avalon? When people refer to Avalon? Yeah, this is the ancient isle of Avalon we're standing on here. All around us the Somerset levels. This was all water 600 years ago.

So do you think that Arthur would have once stood up here on top of the Tor? Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. Surveying his kingdom. The truth is, Blastabree ticks the boxes for what the historical Avalon should have.

But is it chicken and egg? Which came first? The truth is the historical sort of Arthur and probably Camelot would be more along Middle England, North Wales, that vicinity. That makes much more sense. So it makes you wonder if the region around Glastonbury, which is, you know, sacred in its own right, didn't grow up with this sort of mythology in mind. When you stand at the top of the Tor, looking out across what could have been the ancient site of Avalon,

It's possible to imagine King Arthur doing the same thing, lord and ruler of all he could see. But Glastonbury isn't the only place in Britain that lays claim to be Arthur's kingdom. Historian Graham Phillips has spent over two decades trying to unravel the truth about the real, historical King Arthur. His research has led him to a high-status burial site on the border of England and Wales.

where he believes a great king, possibly the real King Arthur, lies buried. 300 years before the first of the Arthurian romances were written in the Middle Ages, you've got this record kept by Welsh priests, it's known as the Welsh Annals, and it refers to events throughout all of Britain that happened during the Dark Ages, so in the 5th, 6th century and so forth.

and we find recorded for what is approximately the year 520 thereabouts, the Battle of Badon in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victorious.

That's the way that these monks would write about it. But it's a matter of fact, and all the stories written in the Middle Ages have Arthur's greatest battle as the Battle of Badon.

You've got another reference to Arthur here. We know 20 years separates them. And this says the Battle of Camlan in which Arthur and Modred perished. Now, in the Middle Ages, the story is that Arthur died at the Battle of Camlan fighting his treacherous nephew, Modred. So it certainly seems that by the late 800s, these people

People who were writing these records of their own history believe Arthur to have been a very real historical figure. And this predates the Arthurian legend of Camelot and Guinevere and Excalibur and all that by at least three centuries. Three centuries. If he was, as I strongly suspect, a Dux Bellorum, a Roman war leader, he would have been wearing a Roman soldier's kit

with a breastplate and leg armor. He would have had a short Roman sword and a very effective Roman shield, plus a Roman-style helmet on his head. There would have been none of this later armor of the kind that one normally sees in museums and Hollywood films. Through his research, Graham has uncovered an 8th century manuscript written by a Welsh monk called Nennius

which tells of a British leader called Arthur who made a successful stand against the invading Anglo-Saxons from Denmark and northern Germany. Nennius refers to Arthur. He says that Arthur fought against the Anglo-Saxons, and then he lists 12 of their battles, 12 battles that Arthur had against them in which he was victorious. And he just mentions in matter of fact, without any kind of elaboration or mythology or anything, Arthur is a...

down-to-earth warrior fighting the Anglo-Saxons. Where's the Arthurian reference there? Oh, right. Una Arthur. Basically, what it says is, in that time, the Saxons strengthened in multitude and grew in Britain. On the death of Hengist, Arthur, his son, passed from the northern part of Britain to the kingdom of

and from him descend the kings of Kent. That's just referring to an ordinary situation concerning the kings of the Anglo-Saxons, Hengist being one of them.

And then it says straight after, "Then Arthur fought against them in those days with the kings of the Britons, but he himself was leader of battles and often victorious. He was leader in 12 battles fought against the Saxons." And then he lists this. In a way, I sense we're getting closer and closer. It's quite clear that he was a leader of Britons and he led them into battle, which is what a king would have done. Precisely.

The archaeology shows that the area around middle England, the Welsh border, it was under assault and there was a period in history when the Saxon invasion was stopped and it was stopped right there. So the military leader who did that, he would have been a hero. So it fits. Historically, that's probably where he would have lived. Graham Phillips' groundbreaking research reveals not only what Arthur was called by his men, the bear, but where he lived.

Not a grand castle, but a Roman wooden hill fort, as more of the fascinating facts about the real historical King Arthur are uncovered.

Who was the real King Arthur?

Did he live in a large fairy tale castle and wield his magic sword Excalibur? Or was he something entirely different? Although the most popular legend connects Arthur to Glastonbury and his possible burial in the Abbey, that theory has never been proven. British historian Graham Phillips has spent most of his life investigating the legend of King Arthur and believes that he may have made a significant breakthrough scanning through the ancient texts of early Britain

He's found a story by a monk called Gildas, who in the 6th century describes the exploits of a local king whose battle name was Diurso, or The Bear.

Now, Gildas wrote around about 445 AD. Now, he is writing within living memory of Arthur's time. Wow, so that's as close as you're going to get. That's as close as you're going to get. Now, unfortunately, he doesn't talk about King Arthur. And many historians have said, well, that proves Arthur didn't exist because Gildas doesn't mention him. But he does mention somebody here called D'Urso.

That is basically the bear. Okay, and there's a picture, because this is like an illuminated manuscript. It's an illuminated manuscript. Now, he refers to a number of British kings by their battle names. Now, what Gildas actually tells us about the bear is as follows. He's actually talking about somebody who's alive while he was alive.

And then he calls him by his name, Kuniglas.

There was a real King Arthur, but we're talking Saxon times. Think Roman centurion. Think somebody who's dressed in battle wear, not in knightly clothes on a horse. That comes five, six hundred years later. He's living in a hill fort. And the sword that he uses, Excalibur, that didn't exist for many hundreds of years. There was no 12-foot broadsword. There were much cruder axes and instruments that were used around the time of the true Arthur.

I think it's much more credible the idea that he would have been a British-born Roman leader. That's much more credible than something that's way out there like we see in the medieval romances. I think there's evidence to that. We can't make a definitive decision about it, but we have to leave open to it. But I think that definitely it's an important possibility to consider. Using his detailed research with access to the ancient documents at the British Library,

Graham is able to confirm that Cuniglas, or King Glass in Welsh, was the son of a warlord known as Óin Fan Gwyn, the real historical King Arthur, also known as the Bear. Interestingly, his descendants in the Middle Ages were the earls of Warwick, whose family symbol is also a bear.

The actual modern Welsh and in Old Brythonic, the language spoken at the time in Britain, the word for bear is Arth. Arth. And in Brythonic, Arthr means the bear. So at the time we believe that King Arthur existed, there is a man whose name would have been pronounced locally as Arthur.

So I'm saying that I found Arthur and the reason why no one's dug up anything saying "here lies Arthur" or anything is because that wasn't his real name. In the Arthurian romances, King Arthur is said to have ruled from a magnificent fortified city called Camelot. However, its site has never been discovered. But digging into the historical texts, Graham believes that he may have found its real location.

Historically, around 500 AD, Britain had fragmented into a number of smaller kingdoms. The largest and strongest of which appears to have been the Kingdom of Powys, now merely a Welsh county. In the late 5th and early 6th centuries, Powys covered much of what are now the Midlands of England and Central Wales. Its capital was Viraconium.

once a thriving Roman town that became the most important city in the country during the post-Roman era. And it was here, Graham believes, that the real historical Arthur, Owen Thanguin, ruled. Right. So you believe then that Arthur would have lived here or this would have been his...

This was both a defensive structure, a court and a hive of industry. They made swords, weapons here. There was farming going on around it. So it was... I mean, in legend, Arthur's Camelot is said to have been both a fort and a grand city, and that's what this was. Thing is, right, why wasn't it called Camelot? Ah, now that's a good point.

If we were looking for somewhere called Camelot and we could just look on a map and say, "Oh, that's Cam-something, can people have done that?" Then that would have been a lot easier to have found Arthur's seat of power in the first place. But unfortunately, looking for somewhere called Camelot doesn't work. It was the invention, the name was the invention of a French poet by the name of Chrétien de Troyes in 1190 in a poem he wrote called Lancelot.

and he needed a word to rhyme with Lancelot. And hence Camelot. It's very likely there was a historical figure who fits the bill for what's described about this military leader who led the assault against the Saxons. But more likely than not, Arthur would have been a title, not their name.

And it's very possible, think about it, he would have been a Roman military leader and where would he have lived? Probably in one of the two or three big Roman concentration capitals throughout Middle England. Now we've seen that Owen Fanguin was called Arthur the Bear and that he ruled from here. What archaeologists found when digging here was quite a bit more about the history of the kings of Paris.

this area. Right. And Óinn Thanguin had a father who also had a battle name. And that battle name was the Terrible Head Dragon. The reason for that is that his father had been king of another kingdom in North Wales. And the dragon became the symbol of Wales. So we know that the dragon is the symbol of these people. That was his father. He kind of split off and came here, did Óinn. His father was called the Terrible Head Dragon. Translate that into Welsh.

And it is Uther Pendragon. The terrible as in mighty Uther Pendragon is the same. The terrible head dragon, Uther Pendragon. So not only do we have a man here whose name was Arthur, who ruled from this most powerful city, his father was called Uther Pendragon. Exactly the same as we are told that Arthur's father's name. Having identified who the real King Arthur was and where he lived,

Historian Graham Phillips takes Jamie to where he believes he fought his last and fatal battle, and where he might be buried, as the truth about one of the world's greatest legends is finally revealed.

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Who was the real King Arthur?

Are the legends about him true? Was his queen Guinevere? And what about his great sword Excalibur? How different is the legend from reality? Although the most popular theory connects Arthur to Glastonbury and his possible burial in the Abbey, that has never been proven. British historian Graham Phillips has spent most of his life investigating the legend of King Arthur and believes that he may have finally solved one of history's greatest mysteries.

His research into the ancient texts of early Britain has possibly not only uncovered the true identity of the real King Arthur, but also where he fought his last battle and, crucially, where he might be buried. Back in the period that Arthur lived,

This was actually a ford. Now, if you remember, the earliest reference to where Arthur fought his very last battle, the Battle of Camlan, is said to have been at Ryddy Gross, which is also said to have been a ford across a river. And this is the place, I believe, that that earliest reference to Arthur's final battle, where he died, actually refers to. So this was the battlefield here, was it?

Well, we don't actually know. There's been no archaeological work done here because no one's had any reason to do any archaeological work. It's only me who has worked out that this is the really grossing question.

It fits with the geography of the description of the last battle, according to the old Welsh poem, because it says Arthur's main forces are in a fort a mile away. Now, right over there, the top of that hill, a mile away, pretty much, is an old fort, which was a Roman fort, which was still being used. We know this because it's been excavated at the time Arthur is said to have lived.

And so Arthur has his horsemen, his cavalry, a mile away encamped around this Ford of the Cross, Ridley Grose.

This is also the boundary between Arthur's kingdom, if he is Owen Thanguin as I believe, of Powys on the one side, and his nephew, Maglicunas' kingdom of Gwynedd that side. So that this would have been a place where they might have met for battle. And how far away are we from Camelot now? About 12 miles. And this road here is the road that went there.

So you can see them, two armies, moving, one from Mount Wales and one from Camelot area. And this is where they would have met. Whether it's fact or fiction, whatever you believe, the King Arthur story continues to be as vital today as it was a thousand years ago. And that's because it's about hope. It's about romance. It's about the fact that times are tough. But you know what? Around the corner, they're probably going to get better.

So this site has never been excavated, has it? This is very much your theory. Yes, well, totally. I mean, nobody has excavated this site because for a start, there's no historical evidence other than what I've discovered about Arthur that suggests that there's any reason to excavate it. But from the Arthurian point of view, we've got a place called Riddigros, the Fall of the Cross, the River Camlad,

the fact that it's near Viraconium, all really tie up when you put my theory together about who Arthur was and where he came from. But other people tend to believe that Arthur came from the southwest of England, Glastonbury, for example. So they've looked for somewhere called maybe the Fall of the Cross, Ridley Grouse in that area, and they've not found one. No one seems to have put two and two together and come across this. But then again, if you don't believe my theory in the first place about where Camelot was and who Arthur was, you probably wouldn't think of looking here.

Graham's research has also found evidence for where he believes the historical King Arthur was actually buried. It's in the fields just outside an ancient Shropshire village called Basschurch. That there was basically a natural hillock.

which has had earthworks added to it, a series of embankments and so forth built around it. It's like defensive. But going back 1500 years, the whole of this area was water. It was a lake. It's been drained over the years to create farmland. So that would have been an island? An island in the middle of a lake. And you believe that to be the final resting place of King Arthur? That place has got to have been the churches of Bassa mentioned in the poem.

We know that that Churches of Bassa place is where the Kings of Powys, all of them, were buried. If Owen Thanguin was Arthur, as I believe, then he was buried there. So that, if you like, is the final burial place of King Arthur, the historical Avalon. But in the poem it talks about the churches. There are no churches here.

The limited amount of archaeology that has been done on that mound has shown there was two or three wooden structures, early Christian churches dating from the post-Roman period. They tended to be built in groups of two or three, each dedicated to a different saint. They would have been on that mound. And if King Arthur is buried there, what would you expect to find with...

The way that we know from various Roman accounts of how the Britons buried their dead was they buried them in oval-shaped pits in the ground six feet deep, and they would bury them very often with their shield. So you'd got a single grave, somebody under the ground in an unmarked grave, you wouldn't have had a stone on top, buried probably on their side with their shield on their arm.

For centuries, King Arthur has remained one of history's greatest mysteries. But who was he? Although the most popular legend connects him to Glastonbury and his possible burial in the abbey, that theory has never been proven. British author and historian Graham Phillips has spent years uncovering the real, true Arthur from ancient texts and archaeological discoveries.

So far, he has been able to identify who he was, a powerful warlord in Roman Britain who lived in the 6th century on the borders of what is today England and Wales. And rather than living in a great castle like Camelot, Phillips believes that he lived in a wooden hill fort called Viriconium. He also believes that he's found the true location of where Arthur is buried today, and has an intriguing ground scan to prove it.

We did last year a geophysics scan of the area and archaeologists came up with this. That denotes an oval-shaped pit about six foot deep, six foot across. And this large black oblong in the middle represents a large ferrous object, an iron, something iron.

- They have said... - Could this be a shield? Absolutely. That's exactly what they suggested. I didn't say we're maybe looking for somebody with a shield. They said, "We think there could be a burial there with somebody with a shield." We don't know how old it is, but it does fit in perfectly with the kind of burials of 1500 years ago.

So this could be one of the greatest, most legendary kings of England, that black blob. That's the closest we've come to seeing. Precisely. Richard III, eat your heart out. That black blob is better. Phillips is in negotiations with both the landowner and the authorities in England to try and get permission to excavate the site, but as yet has no green light to find out who or what is buried there.

I really like the work of what Graham Phillips has done in this area. He's gone to the original sort of source material, which points towards a historical figure, late fifth century, middle England, sort of Welsh border area, a military leader who has a title that is associated with Arthur the Bear.

And he has even dwindled it down to a specific earth mound that sound scans would indicate is a chieftain with some kind of shield. So if anyone's going to pinpoint the historical King Arthur, I think Grand Phillips has a pretty good chance.

I'm certainly all for amateurs being able to further knowledge about certain historical characters and being accepted as doing that. And it's only really the passion of people who

committed their lives to studying these things that you ever move anything on. I mean, look at the Richard III excavations as a perfect example. If Arthur was high status, if he existed and he was high status, there will be a burial out there somewhere and maybe somebody should dig.

I think there's a definite possibility that we could find Arthur and uncover where he might be buried. But the tricky part comes in where could we find the link to actually authenticate that it was Arthur? Will there be evidence buried with him that could authenticate that it's actually Arthur himself? If, it's a big if, if they give him permission to dig, I think we may very well find the historical King Arthur after all this time.

It's one of the great mysteries of all time: just who the real historical King Arthur was. So could this burial mound really be his last resting place? Graham Phillips certainly thinks so. With the ground radar revealing what looks like a man-made cavity of some sort, Phillips hopes that if and when permission for an excavation is given, this ancient mystery might finally be solved and the true story be told.

Not the embellished version of a king in shining armor, living in a great fairy tale castle, but a gritty, battle-hardened warlord, living in a wooden hill fort in the Dark Ages called Óinn Fann Gwyn, the real, historical King Arthur.