The Death of King Arthur

The

Alliterative Morte Arthure – the title given to a four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400 – was part of a medieval Arthurian revival which produced such masterpieces as

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory's prose

Morte D'Arthur.

Like

Gawain, the

AlliterativeMorte Arthure is a unique manuscript (held in the library of Lincoln Cathedral) by an anonymous author, and written in alliterating lines which harked back to Anglo-Saxon poetic composition. Unlike

Gawain, whose plot hinges around one moment of jaw-dropping magic,

TheDeath of King Arthur deals in the cut-and-thrust of warfare and politics: the ever-topical matter of Britain's relationship with continental Europe, and of its military interests overseas.

Simon Armitage is already the master of this alliterative music, as his earlier version of

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2006) so resourcefully and exuberantly showed. His new translation restores a neglected masterpiece of story-telling, by bringing vividly to life its entirely medieval mix of ruthlessness and restraint.