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Society Talk: The ‘Real’ King Arthur

15th October 2026, The ‘Real’ King Arthur, Andrew Breeze, FRHistS, FSA, Author and Historian (All talks held at Holy Trinity Church, Church Street, Haddington at 7.30pm. Doors open at 7pm)

“KING” ARTHUR’S EXISTENCE TO BE PROVED. In a sensational discovery, Dr Andrew Breeze will set out final proof for the real Arthur, a Strathclyde commander (not a king) who fought twelve battles against other North Britons during the terrible famine years of 536-7, died a soldier’s death in 537 near Carlisle, but thereby gained lasting fame as a hero, and was soon a legend due to spread all over the world.

Did King Arthur exist? To this question Dr Andrew Breeze provides a clear and definitive answer. Arthur will have been a North Briton of the 530s, speaking a language related to Welsh and Cornish. He was not a king (a later legend), but the _penteulu_ or “dux bellatorum” or captain of the King of Strathclyde’s warband, fighting battles in what is now southern Scotland and its borders against other Britons, and dying a hero’s death at _Camlan_ or Castlesteads on Hadrian’s Wall in 537. He lived and fought in North Britain, and had nothing to do with the defeat of Saxons at Mount “Badon” in 493, or with notions of him as a Roman-style cavalry commander, attacking Germanic invaders up and down Britain. After nearly 1500 years, patriotic Scots can thus be sure that Arthur lived in their own country, Scotland thereby having given the world one of the greatest stories ever told.

Here is a map of Arthur’s main battles.

Main Battles

Biography

Andrew Breeze was educated at Sir Roger Manwood’s School, Emmanuel College, Cambridge (where he took a first in English in 1974 and in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in 1976,[3] and his PhD in 1992), and at St John’s College, Oxford (where he took a diploma in Celtic studies in 1978).[4] In 1986, he worked as a scholar for the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at the school of Celtic Studies.[5]

Andrew’s most recent books are:

  • 2020 British Battles 493–937: Mount Badon to Brunanburh, Anthem (ISBN 1 78527 223 3)
  • 2023 The Historical Arthur and The Gawain Poet: Studies on Arthurian and Other Traditions. Rowman & Littlefield. (ISBN 978 1 66692 954 6)
  • 2024 Englands Earliest Woman Writer and other Studies on Dark Age Christianity