Here, in a space you might expect to see forklift trucks or light manufacturing, and which is noticeably colder than the mizzling day outside, the production crew have been busy building \u2018rock\u2019 walls from polyurethane, as well as cave interiors and vast menhirs. It\u2019s fantastical and incongruous, but then who can say with any confidence what\u2019s authentically Arthurian?<\/p>\n
After all, according to the show\u2019s historical advisor, Professor Ronald Hutton of Bristol University, interviewed in the significantly warmer environs of his office, we know little about the years between the Romans<\/a> leaving Britain, in AD 410, and St Augustine arriving, in AD 597.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a major event and the records don\u2019t start to go darker and darker \u2013 the plug is pulled,\u201d he says of the early fifth century after Rome\u2019s legions withdrew.<\/p>\n \u201cInstantaneously, the lights go out and it changes Britain completely. You have Saxons and post-Roman Britons roaming around this post-nuclear landscape of gigantic ruins. Technology crashes, people actually lose the art of making pottery for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n To understand why there was such turmoil, it helps to consider the Romano-British economy.<\/p>\n Cash arriving to pay the army created \u201can immensely rich society\u201d, Hutton says. This in turn attracted settlers from elsewhere in the empire, who built houses, and farmed and consolidated estates. When the Romans withdrew because the empire faced multiple attacks from barbarian tribes, the economy imploded.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no modern comparison, mercifully,\u201d says Hutton when HistoryExtra<\/em> offers the idea of a precursor to a modern-day failed state \u2013 although he\u2019s amused by the analogy of a zombie apocalypse, with \u201cthe invading Anglo-Saxons standing in for the zombies, maybe, and the Irish and people from the north, Picts and Scots\u201d.<\/p>\n All of which begs a question, what precisely is the role of a historical advisor if there\u2019s so little actual history to advise on?<\/p>\n Consistency, says Hutton, is key. Not only is it the advisor\u2019s job to help head off any \u201cobvious anachronisms\u201d but also to ensure that characters are \u201coperating with a common set of cultural references\u201d.<\/p>\n The alternative, even when viewers can\u2019t quite put a finger on exactly what\u2019s wrong, can be jarring. \u201cWhat you don\u2019t want to do is to have somebody using a 14th-century sword, a fifth-century ornamentation and speaking a 19th-century script,\u201d says Hutton.<\/p>\n Member exclusive|<\/strong> What really happened in Britain as Roman influence waned? David Musgrove investigates what we know about the end of imperial rule in fifth-century Britain in this HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast miniseries.<\/p>\n Listen now<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> These kinds of anachronisms often bedevil period adaptations. The problem is particularly acute in Arthurian tales where the King Arthur \u2013 or the \u2018King That Never Was\u2019 as The Winter King<\/em>\u2019s promotional material has it \u2013 is a mishmash based on different stories.<\/p>\n The earliest of these dates from around 300 years after Arthur might have been around, and reach down the years to the present day via, among others, Geoffrey of Monmouth<\/a>, Thomas Malory, the Romantic poets and TH White.<\/p>\n It hardly helps matters here that we don\u2019t know if Arthur ever lived. \u201cThere\u2019s a spectrum of possibilities, from a great national leader of the British resistance to non-existent,\u201d says Hutton.<\/p>\n In this context, it\u2019s fascinating to see how Bernard Cornwell\u2019s novels made Arthurian Britain so believable, and avoided being hemmed in by competing stories.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was suggesting something that might actually have happened [in The Warlord Chronicles<\/em>],\u201d says Hutton, \u201cbut taking back people with later medieval names into that earlier period. That\u2019s entirely legitimate. This is, after all, a work of fiction.\u201d In Hutton\u2019s estimation, Cornwell is \u201ca superb storyteller\u201d.<\/p>\n Cornwell\u2019s source material thus offers the creators of The Winter King<\/em> TV series a solid base from which to create a believable world. But what about the real era? Why would anyone want to come to Britain if it was so grim?<\/p>\n As well as push factors \u2013 population pressures in Ireland and in Anglo-Saxon lands on the continent, including in the latter case lowlands adjacent to the North Sea where sea level rise was a problem \u2013 there were definite temptations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe great thing about the Roman province of Britain is that it\u2019s still very rich,\u201d Hutton explains. \u201cIt has great farmland, but also it has the amount of wealth that Roman Britain<\/a> had accumulated, which can be looted in precious metals, valuable objects and plunder. The option of crossing the sea to Britain and laying your hands on this stuff is very attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n DNA evidence, says Hutton, \u201csuggests a lot of people coming from what\u2019s now Germany\u201d while the historical record, in so far as it exists, suggests a local population suffering violence and trauma. \u201cThat\u2019s the Saxons coming in bulk, slaughtering people, driving them off and taking the land. That\u2019s the Bernard Cornwell scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n Another view, sometimes expressed by archaeologists is that there is \u201cno material evidence for massacres or a drop in [the existing] population\u201d. But Hutton highlights that it seems likely Roman villas and towns would already have been deserted. \u201cAnybody who reads accounts of early medieval battles knows that you don\u2019t have war graves. When you slaughter an army you leave it for the crows or the bones just disintegrate.\u201d<\/p>\n For Hutton, compelling evidence for mass Anglo-Saxon immigration lies in linguistic changes and \u201cthe complete loss of Celtic languages\u201d. The incomers are numerous enough to \u201cbring a language with them and keep it\u201d. In contrast, the invaders who arrived in the Norman Conquest<\/a> 1066 spoke French, but two centuries later English was the country\u2019s main language.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fascinating that early accounts of Arthur associate him not with the south, as Cornwell does, but with the north of England and with military prowess.<\/p>\n \u201cArchaeologically, interesting things are happening,\u201d Hutton says. \u201cFor example, the Hadrian\u2019s Wall forts were repaired sometime around AD 500 as a coherent military system, and seemingly linked again to the old Roman city of York. The title of the Roman governor of that area, the military leader, was the dux Britanniarum<\/em>, the \u2018British leader\u2019. The title given to Arthur in The History of The Britons<\/em> [cAD 828] is the dux bellorum<\/em>, the \u2018leader of the battles\u2019.\u201d Not, it\u2019s worth emphasising, that Hutton is here identifying the \u2018real\u2019 Arthur.<\/p>\n Whatever the truth, the world of the fifth-century remains elusive. It is Hutton\u2019s estimation that historians, archaeologists, DNA specialists and linguistics experts need to reconcile evidence \u201cthat is pulling them in different directions\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a place that only really begins to come back into focus when Augustine, sent on a mission to Christianise the Kingdom of Kent, became the first archbishop of Canterbury. \u201cIt\u2019s a religion dependent on books,\u201d says Hutton, \u201cand so the more Christians you have, especially the more monasteries, which are the places that do the writing, the more records you have.\u201d<\/p>\n Back at Cribbs Causeway, we\u2019ve been invited to watch filming, a scene involving a rescue from the Isle of the Dead. Once again, you find yourself reflecting on how this is a fantastical take on the story of Arthur and his cohorts. Crucially, it\u2019s also one created with a huge attention to detail and its own internal consistency.<\/p>\n The Winter King<\/em>, starring Iain De Caestecker as Arthur Pendragon, begins streaming via ITVX on Thursday 21 December. Bad Wolf, the production house behind His Dark Materials<\/em> and Russell T Davies\u2019 second Doctor Who<\/em> reboot, is making the show<\/strong><\/p>\nThe end of Roman Britain<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"Pod](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/12\/Pod-End-of-Roman-Sq-5878ba3.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556\" "\\"Pod")
<\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/section> Who is the<\/em> Winter King?<\/h2>\n
How The Winter King<\/em> depicts Arthurian Britain<\/h2>\n