It is with great sadness that we received the news of the passing of Geoffrey Ashe yesterday.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Honorary Freeman of Glastonbury, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2012 for services to Heritage, but most people visiting this blogsite will know Geoffrey Ashe as a great Arthurian. Indeed, for many of us it was Geoffrey’s books on King Arthur that sparked our endless fascination in the legendary king:
King Arthur's Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury (1957); The Quest For Arthur's Britain (1968); Camelot and the Vision of Albion (1971); Arthurian Britain: The Traveller's Guide (1980); Avalonian Quest (1982), The Discovery of King Arthur (1985); The Landscape of King Arthur (1988); Merlin: The Prophet and His History (2009); in addition to co-editor and contributor on standard Arthurian references works The Arthurian Encyclopedia and The Arthurian Handbook.
He wrote nearly thirty full books and endless articles but no matter what the subject matter it was always worth reading.
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| Geoffrey Ashe at Glastonbury Abbey |
In his Preface to the fiftieth anniversary edition of King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury (Sutton, 2007), Geoffrey said that if he were to write the book today he would say things differently. The original 1957 edition contained many guesses he added and some he was more happier with than others, but he thought far more were right than wrong and stressed that this new preface was a supplement not a recantation.
He goes on to mention that one of the wisest things he had heard on this topic was from the late Aelred Watkin, a monk of Downside Abbey, who said, “you only have to tell some crazy story in Glastonbury and in ten years’ time it will be an ancient Somerset legend”. Geoffrey agreed and admitted that he had seen a legend being born after just four years, not ten!
It was Geoffrey’s writing that first drew my attention to Glastonbury many years ago:
“The Abbey’s most famous legend grew around something that was perfectly real, a primitive-looking one-storey church on the present site of the Lady Chapel. Its dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary may have been the earliest on this side of the Alps. By historical times it was so ancient that no one knew who had put it there, so it was known simply as the Old Church. Stories took shape around it, some giving it a supernatural origin, some a human but remarkable one.”
Then of course he comes to Arthur’s grave:
“The question of Arthur’s grave, allegedly discovered in the Abbey burial ground in 1190 or ‘91, can today be taken a little further. The notion of a pure fraud and fiction does not entirely work. It is untrue, for instance, that Arthur was never associated with Glastonbury before. He was. He was brought there by the Welsh hagiograpgher Caradoc of Llancarfan in his ‘Life’ of Gildas now assigned to 1130, or thereabouts…….. I continue to be impressed by the fact that the monks’ claim was not challenged.”
In 1965 Geoffrey Ashe was instrumental in forming The Camelot Research Committee with C A Ralegh Radford to investigate the possibility that an Arthur-type figure, a Post-Roman warlord, was once resident at the hillfort at South Cadbury Castle in Somerset. Excavations under the direction of Leslie Alcock 1966-70 revealed that the fort had indeed been re-fortified in post-Roman times, the classic Arthurian period. Alcock published his interpretation of his findings in the book 'By South Cadbury Is That Camelot' (Thames & Hudson, 1972).
Geoffrey was the leading proponent of the existence of a historical King Arthur putting forward the theory, persuasively, in his book ‘The Discovery of King Arthur’ (1985). Using classical sources such as Sidonius Apollinaris, Gregory of Tours, and Jordanes, he argued that Riothamus, also known as the “King of the Britons”, was active along the Loire valley in northern Gaul supporting the Romans against the Visigoths around 470 AD which, he argued, could be the only explanation for Arthur’s Gallic campaign as told in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.
However, Geoffrey was not just an Arthurian, he also had a fascination with prophecy, two of his best books on the subject are ‘The Book of Prophecy’ (1999) and ‘The Encyclopedia of Prophecy’ (2001).
“In its primary sense, prophecy means inspired utterance. A mortal is speaking with more than mortal knowledge or insight, perhaps of future events, but not necessarily.”
Geoffrey’s words will certainly be remembered as inspired utterance.
Geoffrey Ashe
29 March 1923 - 30 January 2022
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