Search results for ""Author Simon Stirling""

Arthur led the Britons to the brink of victory but was cut down by treachery and betrayal. Arthurian legends have since been corrupted, leading to popular but false assumptions about the king and the belief that his grave could never be found. Drawing on a vast range of sources and new translations of early British and Gaelic poetry, Arthur explodes these myths and exposes the shocking truth. In this, the first full biography of Arthur, Simon Andrew Stirling provides a range of proofs that Artuir mac Aedain was the original King Arthur; he identifies the original Camelot, the site of Arthur’s last battle and his precise burial location. For the first time ever, the role played by the early Church in Arthur’s downfall and the fall of North Britain is also revealed. This includes the Church’s contribution to fabricated Arthurian history, the unusual circumstances of his burial and the extraordinary history of the sacred isle on which he was buried.

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Sir William Davenant (1606–1668) – Poet Laureate and Civil War hero – is one of the most influential and neglected figures in the history of British theatre. He introduced ‘opera’, actresses, scenes and the proscenium arch to the English stage. Narrowly escaping execution for his Royalist activities during the Civil War, he revived theatrical performances in London, right under Oliver Cromwell’s nose. Nobody, perhaps, did more to secure Shakespeare’s reputation or to preserve the memory of the Bard. Davenant was known to boast over a glass of wine that he wrote ‘with the very spirit’ of Shakespeare and was happy to be thought of as Shakespeare’s son. By recounting the story of his eventful life backwards, through his many trials and triumphs, this biography culminates with a fresh examination of the vexed issue of Davenant’s paternity. Was Sir William’s mother the voluptuous and maddening ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and was he Shakespeare’s ‘lovely boy’?

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