Given the number of movies, plays, poems, and novels about the man, you would think that the entire planet knows King Arthur was obviously a real person. The actual story is that proof has never been found that the man existed. St. Gildas, a monk writing about 540 A.D., mentions an earlier figure named Vortigern who won a battle against the Saxons. That account was picked up by others, including the Venerable Bede about 731 A.D. in the early 1100s, Geoffrey of Monmouth blew those accounts up, giving us Arthur, Merlin, and the start of the legend as we’ve come to know it. At History Today, Ken Dark makes the case for Arthur as a real person. (And I know for a fact that Guinivere looked exactly like Vanessa Redgrave, and the 1968 movie “Camelot” proved it.)
He may be the most successful writer you never heard of. Japanese author Seishi Yokomizo sold 55 million books in his lifetime, almost all detective stories. Then World War II started, and the Japanese government wouldn’t allow him to publish, because Western influences were considered verboten. After Japan’s defeat, Yokomizo was once again free to publish. And his books are finally being translated into English.
It may be one of the most unusual reversal stories I’ve read in a while. A young woman enters Columbia University as a liberal, and her experience transformed her into a conservative.
More Good Reads
Life and Culture
The Banality of Disruption – Glen Sproviero at The Imaginative Conservative.
The Morning Leonard Cohen Explained Antisemitism – Steven Karras at Steven’s Substack.
The Wendell Berry Moment – Daniel Vollaro at Front Porch Republic.
Writing and Literature
I Prefer Not To: Literary Laments in the Age of AI Dead Letters – Barbara Castle at Front Porch Republic.
Literature as Part of Life – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.
Dostoevsky Rediscovered – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.
America 250
The Declaration of Independence in Richmond – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
Jefferson & the Crucible of Peaceable Coercions – Geoff Smock at the Journal of the American Revolution.
British General Benedict Arnold, Goerge Washington and the Nadir of the American Cause – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.
American Stuff
White Haven: U.S. Grant’s St. Louis, Missouri Home – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era.
Historian blasts Smithsonian’s activism shift after first visit in over a decade: ‘Completely different place’ – Kiera McDonald and Andrew Mark Miller at Fox News.
Poetry
Village – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.
The Beautiful Invisible: Jan Twardowski’s Poetic Lessons on Loving in Solitude – Grzegorz Ignatik at Church Life Journal.
“The Thrush,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
You’re Still You – Josh Groban (from Ally McBeal)
Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1943) by Albert Reuss (1889-1975).
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