Content area
Full text
R. G Collingwood and the historical King Arthur
Collingwood, one of our greatest historians of Roman Britain, helped fuel the belief in an historical King Arthur. Why did he make such a claim, and on so little evidence?
There should be no hesitancy doubting his existence
R. G. Collingwood is remembered today as a philosopher, a man with a wide range of interests, the core of whose work is in the Idealist tradition. He died in 1943 and although his work has subsequently not been widely celebrated the promotion of it revived in 1994 with the establishment of the Collingwood Society. He is remembered by university historians for his ambitious Idea of History (1946), an extended essay on the philosophies underpinning historical discourse. Many students of history remember his Roman Britain and the English Settlements (OUP, 1936 with J. N. L. Myres), which was a key text for thirty years. And his boyhood is remembered, by proxy, among those brought up on Swallows and Amazons; he and his siblings being the template for Arthur Ransome's child adventurers.
Collingwood was also largely responsible for a phenomenon in popular culture, for his voice did the most to establish the twentieth century popular orthodoxy that King Arthur was a historical figure. Collingwood was the first twentieth century university historian to firmly champion the historicity of Arthur in the face of the earlier orthodoxy that this hero was a myth. He wrote no more than a few pages about Arthur, but the vivid image he conjured became accepted as real by students, the public and some historians. This idea was largely unchallenged for over thirty years and has power even today. This article is an investigation into why Collingwood made such radical claims for Arthur - based on little evidence - and why his ideas were so widely accepted.
Robin Collingwood was born in 1889, his father W.G. Collingwood being Ruskiris secretary for the final years of the great maris life. A competent water colourist and novelist, Collingwood senior is remembered for his work on Norse and Anglo Saxon stone crosses and as a forward looking archaeologist. Robin picked up W G.s interests and after Oxford they worked together in Naval Intelligence during the Great War. The two...