Pendragon arrives at Gwynedd to ally himself with Cunedda against the tyrant Vortigern, but is slain in battle. A boy, Arthur, is revealed as his son, but he must bide his time. Not until the Saxons plunge the country into chaos is he able to claim the kingship and his love Gwenhwyfar as his.

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2007-09-17 An Exquisite Portrayal

Helen Hollick was born 1953 in Walthamstow, North East London. When she came of age to seek employment she had always yearned to be a journalist, but her careers advice was unhelpful. You can't be a journalist she was told, you can't type. Instead she ended up working in a library. The one advantage of working there was that she had access to lots of books. By the time she was married with a young daughter she found she had time to begin writing herself and began to put down on paper her own thoughts of Arthurian Britain.

In her own words the author stated that she made a conscious decision to leave Merlin and Lancelot out of the books. There was to be no magic or myths in the book. What she did not know was that her writings on the subject would not just fill one book, but three.

Personally I found the book very refreshing and forward looking, if that can be said about a book that covers a period of time well over a thousand years ago. It coincided closely with my own feelings on what the Arthurian period may have been like. The book was certainly a million miles away from the Hollywood image of the period. Showing `knights' in full plate tournament armour. Something that was not invented for another several hundred years after the period that Arthur, or someone like him may have lived.