Heroes For All Times Ian Hislop's Olden Days

'It's clear that many of us in Britain are in love with the past.

'Whether it's swordcraft or Spitfires,

'mead or musket training, we relish harking back.

'But it's not so much history we're in love with

'as something rather less true...

'but just as powerful.

'The olden days.'

Mention "the olden days" to any child

and they'll know exactly what you mean.

It's a precise historical period dating back from

when their parents were children to about 10,000 years BC.

It's the vast realm of everything that's supposedly gone before.

Some of it is in black and white,

some of it's in glorious technicolour,

and a lot of it is slightly out of focus.

But, even when we grow up as adults in this country, many of us

retain that deep fascination for a heightened, idealised,

imagined past - including me.

BARKED MILITARY COMMANDS

'In this series, I'll be enjoying the very best of the olden days...

'..as seen in our art, our literature,

'and our occasionally delusional collective consciousness.

'I'll be looking at two of our oldest, greatest heroes.

'Our need for colourful, time-honoured tradition.

'And our deep love for the countryside of yesterday.

'But I do have a warning for you.'

The olden days has the best characters

and the best stories, though not necessarily the best facts.

It's the place for myths and legends,

for that grey area between truth and fiction.

It's often what we want to believe happened rather than what

really happened, and it's quite often what the person writing

the history is very keen for us to believe.

'But the extraordinary thing about the olden days is that

'they've always been alive and active,

'creative and influential, and very much in the here and now.'

It's odd but true that we're pretty familiar with our deepest past.

And, though they're known as the Dark Ages,

it's amazing how vividly we still connect to the stories

of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings - to that vast and vague epoch

between the Romans leaving in 410 AD and the Normans arriving in 1066.

The thing about going back to the mists of time

is that they're pretty misty.

Information about the Dark Ages is in short supply,

so we can fill in the gaps with our imagination,

furnishing these very olden days

with a cast of wizards, dragons and charismatic warrior kings.

It's to two characters in particular

that we have returned again and again.

The first, King Arthur, probably never existed.

The second, Alfred the Great, was certainly real,

but was reinvented to suit the needs of every age.

These two very different Dark Age kings are pillars

of our national story, our foundation myth.

Out of their heroic deeds, and the round tables

and the burnt cakes, emerges the idea of Britain itself.

Everyone knows Arthur - or so they think.

His story has swirled around for at least a thousand years.

But where did the tales of Arthur actually start?

'The very earliest references are a few obscure fragments depicting him

'as a wild Celtic warlord from Wales in perhaps the early 6th century.'

But the figure we know - a king conceived here, in Tintagel,

in Cornwall...

..a king with a band of brave knights

and a magical ally called Merlin,

was created in the traumatic aftermath of the Norman Conquest.

And that's because it's when things change the most

that the past becomes most inspiring.

"Arthur put on a leather jerkin worthy of so great a king.

"On his head he placed a golden crest

"carved in the shape of a dragon.

"He girded on his peerless sword, called Caliburn,

"which was forged in the Isle of Avalon. A spear called Ron

"graced his right hand, long, broad and thirsty for slaughter."

The man who penned Arthur's story was a monk,

Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the year 1136.

His book was called History Of The Kings Of Britain,

yet Geoffrey didn't claim to have written it.

Cleverly, he claimed to have translated it,

from a very old book in the British tongue, which he'd been given.

No-one has ever found this very old book, probably because it

doesn't exist, but Geoffrey was very keen to claim it as a source

to make his history seem more ancient, more venerable, more true.

He wanted to create the authentic account of a glorious,

but vanished, age.

Geoffrey recounted that it was Brutus of Troy, no less,

who'd first led the perilous voyage to distant Albion,

to defeat its giants and rename it Britain - after himself.

You'll find Julius Caesar in Geoffrey's history,

not to mention King Lear - and even Old King Cole.

But the character that really grabbed the hearts and minds

of the newly arrived Normans was Celtic King Arthur.

The Normans wanted to feel that they belonged in Britain,

that they were part of the story,

so they weren't interested in Anglo-Saxon heroes -

these were the people they'd just conquered,

the people who they could see digging ditches and feeding swine

outside their castle walls.

But when Geoffrey of Monmouth came up with an obscure Celtic hero

from hundreds of years before,

who'd actually taken on the Saxon invaders at the time,

then this was ideal for the new rulers.

And it proved surprisingly popular amongst their Anglo-Saxon subjects,

because for them the story was all about a local hero

resisting cruel, tyrannous, foreign invaders.

So Arthur became a shared British hero from a safely distanced

but romanticised past - the mystical, magical olden days.

'Even at the time, this was all too much for rival historians.

'William of Newburgh's History Of English Affairs

'was far more factual, but far less popular.

'He said of Geoffrey, "It's quite clear that everything

'"this man wrote was made-up.

'"Only a person ignorant of ancient history would have any doubt

'"about how shamelessly and impudently he lies

'"in almost everything."

'It's the historian's classic complaint. You may have the truth

'on your side, but if your story's dull, no-one will want to read it.'

Thanks to Geoffrey of Monmouth's lead, Arthur flourished.

European poets in the 12th century turned him into the leading man

of their chivalric romances.

But there was an English king whose claims to hero status

far outweighed Arthur's - and he was real.

This was the Christian monarch who, in 878 AD,

defeated the Great Heathen Army of the Vikings,

who united Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into what would become England itself.

-Hello, Jane.

-Ian, how nice to see you. Welcome to St Mary's.

Very nice to meet you. Thank you. Where's the jewel?

We've put the jewel out for you in the Lady Chapel.

'In the 17th century, an artefact was found in a field

'here in Somerset, which sheds some light on this Dark Age king.

'A replica of this priceless treasure is kept at St Mary's.

'On the front, seen through rock crystal, is an enigmatic,

'enamelled figure.'

It appears to be a middle-aged man with fair hair, without a beard,

slightly boss-eyed, wearing green,

and his image set in this fantastic ornate jewelled item,

which is called an aestal, which is a pointer.

There was a stick like this here, but it's rotted away,

and it's used for pointing out passages in scripture,

the important bits - you point like this.

The clue to who made this aestal

comes with its inscription in filigree gold.

It says "Aelfred" - which is Alfred, Alfred the Great -

"Aelfred mec heht gewyrcan".

"Alfred had me made" - which he did.

He had these made, and gave them out to various churches

in order to spread the gospel.

The figure in the jewel might be Christ,

he might be a symbol of learning or wisdom.

Tantalisingly, some have suggested he might even be Alfred himself.

Whoever he is, it's one of the very few objects

we have that provides a direct, tangible link to Dark Age Alfred.

The man who rallied the English, the man who defeated the Vikings,

the man who subsequent Victorian historians would say was

the most perfect character in history.

The trouble is, it doesn't matter how perfect you are

if everyone forgets you.

He's become rather obscure as a figure, hasn't he?

I mean, there was a period when everyone knew who he was.

Do you think that's true anymore?

No, I think you're probably right.

But the Alfred Jewel, particularly here,

is held in great respect.

But as a figure himself,

yes, he does seem to get lost in the midst of time.

I couldn't help noticing this, that the niche...

You've spotted it, yes.

..where Alfred used to be,

there's now a plaque that says "Diana, Princess of Wales".

Mm. I mean, that shows how fickle history is.

-Another piece...another piece of history.

-Yeah.

So, in a sense, the public moves on, doesn't it?

-Yes, yes, it does.

-Finds other heroes.

This is the heart of Wessex, the kingdom that Alfred saved.

In fact, you could argue that he saved the whole of England.

Not only did Alfred repel the Vikings,

he reorganised the army, drafted a new legal code,

and put learning at the heart of his kingdom - not, perhaps,

as exciting as pulling a sword from a stone, but rather more useful.

Here was a real monarch with a genuine political, legal

and cultural legacy.

But people preferred fairy-tale Arthur to workaday Alfred.

There's gratitude for you.

That's the fabulous quality of the olden days -

they really are a great cabinet of curiosities.

Just about everything and anything can be drawn out to suit

the current times - or tucked away again.

So, while Anglo-Saxon Alfred was consigned to obscurity,

Celtic Arthur underwent another upgrade.

Already transformed from obscure Welsh warlord into Geoffrey's

superhero king, and then Europe's leading man,

he was about to change again,

becoming not just heroic, but holy.

Arthur was now on a mission from God, questing for nothing less

than the Holy Grail, the very cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper.

And the transformation happened

at one of the most magical sites in England.

Welcome to Glastonbury Abbey.

My name is Leofric and I am one of the abbot's tithesmen.

I'd like to start off my tour by first of all talking about

the legend saying that Joseph of Arimathea came to Glastonbury Abbey.

Joseph of Arimathea is meant to have been Jesus' great uncle.

Now, Joseph brought with him a very special treasure.

Many people say that Joseph would have brought the Holy Grail with him,

and that when he gets here he buries this cup

in the ground to prevent anyone from getting their hands on it,

for using it for any evil means or anything like that.

'Now, sceptical historians might consider it a touch implausible

'that Christendom's holiest relic should fetch up in Somerset,

'particularly since no-one had ever found it again.

'And yet it was extremely well known that in the olden days,

'Arthur and his knights had actually felt its holy presence right here,

'which made Arthur the obvious saviour for the monks

'of Glastonbury Abbey when, in 1184,

'their monastery was ravaged by fire.'

It was a half-timber, half-stone building with a thatched roof,

so it's going to burn very quickly indeed, so there's not much left.

And they have just built this beautiful chapel over here,

so they're obviously a bit strapped for cash,

and they think finding a wonderful relic is going to reinvigorate

the trade and they'll get more rich benefactors,

more people want to come and visit their monastery.

'By an extraordinary coincidence, in their hour of darkest need,

'one of the monks had a vision.

'It told him that King Arthur himself was buried nearby.

'They hastily began digging - sensibly enough in the cemetery -

'and, would you believe it, they found some bones(!)

'The bones of the great King of Camelot and his beloved wife.'

Gerald of Wales was a medieval chronicler who'd been rather

sniffy about Arthur - until he peered inside the grave

with his own eyes and he was miraculously converted.

This is what he wrote he saw.

"A coffin made from a hollowed-out oak with two bodies in it,

"deep in the earth at Glastonbury.

"And on top of the grave there was a lead cross

"with an inscription on it."

And Gerald not only read the inscription, but he felt the letters

with his fingers, and this is what it said.

"Here lies buried the renowned

"King Arthur, with Guinevere his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon."

Proof!

Did the monks consciously think,

"We've got the Grail, there are some stories

"connected with the Grail, with Arthur, let's find Arthur"?

It may have been, yes - "We desperately need money,

"the best way to do it is to find a very famous individual.

"Who has everyone heard of in England at the time

"and who's popular kind of in the culture at the time? Arthur."

'One thing's for sure - this handy discovery of a legendary

'hero at just the right time certainly paid dividends.

'The abbey was rebuilt as cash flooded in from all the new

'visitors flocking to Glastonbury.'

And the town has been trading on its reputation as a mystic

wonderland ever since.

I'd like to go back now to the real olden days -

way back to the late 1970s -

a golden age when I was an English student.

Yes, there were Arthurian romances to read.

But at university I learnt that, in the history of the English language,

Arthur plays second fiddle to Alfred.

This is my Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader - a selection of texts

written in the original Anglo-Saxon that we had to

study as part of the course at Oxford.

And one of the pieces was Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care.

And it was hugely influential in England, largely because

we think it was the first book ever translated from Latin into English.

And the person who translated it was "Alfred Kuning" - King Alfred.

'Alfred believed in education, and, as so few people understood Latin,

'he translated the most important works into Anglo-Saxon English.'

He wrote - and if you'll forgive the accent -

"Fordy me dyncd betre, gif iow swae dyncd,

"daet we eac sumae bec,

"da de niedbedearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne."

He says he wants translated some books that are most

needful for men to know, so they can read them in their own language.

'And that is a pretty progressive thought from the so-called

'Dark Ages.'

So, for early scholars, Alfred was always a hero, even though

the rest of the medieval world had largely forgotten him.

Perhaps that's why,

when a crisis hit the newly formed University College at Oxford,

it wasn't the spirit of Arthur the fellows summoned, it was Alfred.

So what exactly are we looking at?

We're looking at a piece of parchment written in the 1380s and

it records a great big legal dispute involving University College.

We had acquired some land in the 1360s and the descendants of the

original vendor claimed that there was an error in the small print.

And this was a big error,

because if we lost the land we'd lose two-fifths of our income.

'With the dispute going against them,

'the fellows of University College had a brainwave.

'They wrote this craftily penned petition to the King,

'Richard II, asking him to intervene in the legal dispute.'

So, "to the most excellent, redoubtable and reverend lord,

"our King, and his most wise council, your pauper petitioners,

"the master and scholars of your college first founded

"by your noble ancestor King Alfred."

What you've got to imagine is, there's Richard II, probably getting

a whole lot of petitioners around him, and someone says,

"Your Majesty, look, this is a place that was founded

-"by King Alfred, your ancestor, sire."

-Ahh.

Richard, who's a teenager, at this point says, "Ooh,

"this sounds fun, I want to have a look."

Why did using Alfred's name appeal to Richard?

Well, Richard was something of a genealogy geek

among English monarchs.

I think it's part of his wanting to project himself as very

monarchic, very regal, very much the monarch, and as part of that

it's kind of, "look at all my great line of ancestors".

Alfred is suitable, he's appropriate as a monarch

and as a founder but, unfortunately, he didn't found the college, did he?

He didn't at all.

We were really founded by a guy called William of Durham,

who was a theologian at Paris, a very splendid man,

but he's not exactly famous, is he?

So, despite the fact that this petition is beautifully presented,

it's nicely written by a scribe,

-they've just made it up, haven't they?

-Yes.

All of it.

-Yes, but it worked.

-It worked!

We keep the property, and it's all sorted.

So, actually, King Alfred was a very good chum to us.

Is there no sense of irony amongst the scholars about the fact that,

as a centre of academic excellence, their founding myth is...nonsense?

I have this slight feeling about the people that created this -

they thought, surely, we MUST be this ancient,

surely we must be founded by King Alfred.

And you get this again and again, if you look at kind of...the kind

of bogus histories that you see for other institutions, like Cambridge,

or, indeed, Parliament, it's kind of they wish it so, that they want...

And, therefore, it is.

They go back to the olden days, even older olden days,

if they possibly can.

And Alfred is about as olden as the university needed?

He was, he'll do nicely. Yes.

And the rest, as they say, is history - even when it isn't.

Alfred was co-opted as founder of the entire university.

'I may have mentioned at the beginning that the stories

'of history can prove powerful -

'even when they have little connection with the truth.

'And this turns out to be especially the case

'when one is dealing with Oxford-educated lawyers.'

So, in the later Middle Ages, Alfred continued to have

fans among the bookish elite.

But it was dashing Arthur who remained the crowd-pleaser.

At the end of the 15th century, hand-written manuscripts gave way

to print in an information revolution.

And one of the very first bestsellers to spring from the new

printing presses was a sensational new telling of the Arthur story.

Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur was a very different Arthur,

for different, darker times.

England had just emerged from bloody civil war - the War of the Roses.

Malory wrote his epic romance while in jail.

No wonder his Arthur is characterised less by Christian

derring-do than by betrayal, sexual intrigue, and death.

In Malory's version, the treacherous Sir Mordred

is Arthur's own illegitimate son,

and he gets his revenge on his father by attempting

to marry Arthur's queen, Guinevere,

and stealing his kingdom from him.

Everyone you love ends up dead.

And Malory himself had seen his country torn in two

by the dynastic feuding between the houses of York and Lancaster.

And all his anguish and all the tragedy of that time is

channelled into this Le Morte D'Arthur,

one of the most influential works in English literature.

"When Sir Mordred felt that he had his death wound

"he smote Arthur with his sword.

"The sword pierced the helmet.

"And therewithal Sir Mordred fell stark dead.

"And the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth."

Malory's story was to become the basis

for every subsequent Arthurian tale,

from childhood classics

to television adaptations and big-budget movies.

Back in the 16th century, Arthur's popularity

made him extremely useful to a new young king.

In 1509, when Henry VIII came to the throne,

the Welsh Tudors were seen by many as recent upstarts.

So they claimed Arthurian descent to bolster their legitimacy.

Some sort of relic linking Henry to King Arthur

would be absolutely ideal.

Unfortunately, the Grail was safely buried somewhere in Glastonbury,

so what else might there be?

Well, how about this?

This extraordinary one and a quarter tonne oak phenomenon

had long been one of Winchester's greatest attractions.

King Arthur's Round Table,

where King Arthur had presided over the ideal court at Camelot.

And the knights had sat there, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad,

Sir Gawain, Sir Bors, Sir Percival, the evil Sir Mordred.

In 1522, Henry threw an extravagant, Arthurian-themed party,

inviting the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, to this very hall.

Henry VIII was determined to impress his royal friend,

so he gave the table a complete makeover.

He had it painted

and he put his own emblem, the Tudor Rose, smack in the middle.

He also included a portrait of Arthur,

who looks remarkably like... Henry VIII.

It wasn't subtle, but Henry didn't do subtlety.

His message was clear. He was the heir to Arthur.

Though the Arthurian table was pure fantasy,

the parallels between Henry's court and Camelot were not.

Like Arthur, Henry's love life was far from simple.

His divorce from Catherine of Aragon

led to the break with the Roman Catholic Church.

Which, in turn, led to the English Reformation.

Which, in turn, led to the re-emergence...of Alfred.

The 16th century was a time of national trauma

as Catholics and Protestants died, and killed, for their beliefs.

SCREAMING

Iconoclastic Protestants

would have melted down the Holy Grail, not revered it.

Arthur was out.

Alfred was in.

He became a figurehead for the Protestants,

cunningly reinvented to legitimise their religious revolution.

This would be the most audacious piece

of historical manipulation yet.

BIRDSONG

Protestants wanted to have a more direct line to God,

to be able to read scripture in their own language.

This was revolutionary stuff.

And if there's one thing we British don't much like...it's revolution.

An ancient king who shared their values

would make England's new religious establishment seem far less radical.

And Alfred, we remember from our Anglo-Saxon Reader,

had translated religious works into English.

Alfred took what was a...

religion which expresses itself mostly in the Latin,

and he turns it into something available in English,

for English priests, for English-educated laity,

for English courtiers.

Most people would have imagined that the first English versions

of anything in the Bible were much, much later.

-I think they would be surprised to find out that it was Alfred who did it.

-Yes.

He respected the English language in ways that were never the case

at the time in other parts of Europe with their own native tongues

and definitely believed that English people

deserved to have their religion brought to them

in the language that they lived in.

And that resonated very, very strongly, of course, with the Protestant mission.

The man who realised Alfred might be effectively "spun"

to give the new Protestant nation the historical pedigree it lacked

was Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury under Elizabeth I.

Parker dug out an ancient biography of the Anglo-Saxon monarch

which had been written by one of Alfred's own courtiers,

a bishop called Asser.

Asser did his royal master proud.

He presents Alfred as the supremely accomplished monarch.

He defeats the Vikings, he rebuilds London,

he reorganises the tax system.

And he still has time to learn Latin in the evenings.

This is less biography than hagiography.

The problem for Alfred is that he's too perfect,

he's in danger of being dull.

We crave a moment of fallibility, a hint of weakness, a human touch.

One good story would do it.

And that is where Archbishop Parker comes in again.

"The king was sitting by the hearth, preparing his bow and arrows

"and other weapons of war.

"When the wretched woman saw the cakes burning,

"she ran in, abusing the unconquered King saying, 'Ah, you man!

"'When you saw the cakes burning, why were you too lazy to turn them?

"'For you're glad enough to eat them all hot!'

"Now that unlucky woman little thought that he was King Alfred."

The burnt cake story hadn't been in Asser originally,

but Parker slipped it in,

having come across it in another, later, even more obscure manuscript.

Alfred's culinary cock-up

soon became one of the most popular stories of the age

and Alfred one of our most popular kings.

The reinvention was more successful

than Parker could ever have foreseen.

This new, old king, perfect for the Protestant age,

would, from the 17th century on,

be known by all Britons as Alfred the Great.

All stories need a hero and the national story is no exception.

When I was a child British history

was a seamless narrative of British heroes in stirring tales.

And I didn't bother much then about the accuracy of the sources

or whether they existed at all, I just responded to the characters.

And I wasn't entirely wrong,

because as I've got older I've realised

that the important thing about heroes is not so much who they are,

but who we need them to be.

We talk about looking up to heroes,

but we're actually projecting onto them

our current obsessions and passions.

It's this malleable quality that means Alfred could serve

so many different ages in so many different ways.

In the 18th century,

Britain was embracing enlightenment, not enchantment,

-science, not superstition.

-CROWS CAW

Alfred, though now nearly 900 years old, was still going strong,

and about to be reinvented again

for a whole new generation of political players.

King George II loved the army,

he was the last British king to lead troops into action,

he wanted to see Britain on the battlefield,

preferably slaughtering the French.

But his son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, had other plans.

He had a vision of Britain conquering the globe

from the high seas.

Frederick hated his father and everything he stood for.

So he set up a rival court here at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire,

with his allies The Patriots.

So to be a Patriot means that you espouse the sort of true values

of Englishness, which at this time are seen as Protestantism,

liberty, commercial expansion and a sort of maritime navy.

Alfred becomes The Patriots' idea of what a true king should be.

So he's charismatic, he's dynamic,

he appeals to his people, most importantly, he's visible.

The young Frederick, who is the young Prince of Wales,

he's got new ideas, he wants a new way of looking at things,

why does he go backwards to Alfred?

Innovation and modernity is a dirty word in the 18th century,

because it implies a sort of creativity,

a playing fast and loose with the rules,

whereas what you need to do is you need to be able to paint innovation

as restoration of a previous idea.

These chaps, The Patriots, they find in Alfred a mirror and an image

of everything that they want themselves to be.

And that's his power, that's his potency.

What you see is these men looking back into the English past

to find what they want the future to look like.

Frederick decided to make some noise about Alfred.

Music and theatre were the mass media of the age,

an ideal way to transmit a political message.

So in 1740 Frederick commissioned the composer Thomas Arne

and the poets David Mallet and James Thomson to write Alfred, A Masque.

This would show his father what a true king should be.

It is an eccentric piece of work.

The action principally revolves around a blind bard,

a couple of fairies and some peasants spouting political slogans.

It would probably have been long forgotten

were in not for one rather memorable tune.

# When Britain first, at Heaven's command... #

Alfred had built a few ships

and fought a few sea battles against the Vikings,

but once Frederick and his songwriters had finished with him

he'd become the founder of the all-conquering Royal Navy.

# This was the charter, the charter of the land

# And guardian angels sang this strain

ALL: # Rule, Britannia

# Britannia rule the waves

# Britons never, never, never will be slaves! #

APPLAUSE

ALL: # Rule, Britannia

# Britannia rule the waves

# Britons... #

Rule Britannia became Britain's unofficial national anthem.

And 270 years later there's nothing more patriotically,

tub-thumpingly British than this hymn to Alfred and the sea.

# Britons never, never, never will be slaves! #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

As the 19th century dawned, Alfred's star remained high,

but in an age of Romanticism Arthur would be born again.

His new birthplace, from where he would reconquer the world,

was his alleged original home, Wales.

The great heyday of South Wales industrial might

is itself an olden-days memory now,

its mines and factories overgrown ruins.

But in the early 19th century

Wales was undergoing a staggering transformation.

Many people worried that, because of industrialisation,

an ancient culture was going up in smoke.

Some of those who were most concerned

were the very people who were driving change.

Lady Charlotte Guest was an Englishwoman,

the wife of one of the most successful iron makers in Wales.

In 1837, she began translating

a series of Medieval Welsh tales, the Mabinogion.

Arthurian legends were at its heart.

"Then said Arthur, it were well for thee, Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd,

"to go upon this quest, for thou knowest all languages

"and art familiar with those of the birds and the beasts.

"And as for you, Kai and Bedwyr, I have hope of whatever

"adventure ye are in quest of, that ye will achieve it."

What's different about this Arthur that we have in the Mabinogion,

compared to the Arthur that we've been presented with before?

What's new is the claim for Arthur

and Arthurian romance as the Welsh contribution to European literature,

the cradle, if you like,

of something which did actually affect

the whole of European literature.

There's presumably an audience that is happy to think,

"Well, Arthur was properly Welsh, he's ours and we started everything."

There is certainly an audience that's very happy to think that, indeed.

Why, in this period, when everyone seems to be looking forward,

there's a huge industrial revolution going on,

why is there this desire to look backwards?

It's such a period of rapid change.

The demographics of this part of Wales are changing so quickly.

Old community structures are being broken up, language is shifting.

When things happen too quickly around you,

people reach into the past for some kind of security,

the idea of things being more under control in the olden days,

things being simpler and easier.

It's ironic, isn't it,

that the English wife of an English industrialist

is trying to help the Welsh rediscover their very early roots.

That's it to some extent,

but they just love knights, they love dressing up.

They like suits of armour. They've got suits of armour all over their houses! I mean, what can you do?

Wales was having a big olden-days moment.

For centuries its language and literature

had been overshadowed by a dominant England tradition.

But now the Welsh were fighting back,

keen to prove that their culture was just as "olden" as anyone else's.

So they revived the tradition of Eisteddfods,

celebrations of music and storytelling

from the time of the Medieval bards.

And then they looked even further back,

summoning up a tradition of pre-Roman Druids.

This footage is from 1926,

by which time these festivals had become a national institution.

Here's the future George VI and the Queen Mother joining in the fun.

All these would-be Druids needed

were appropriately ancient sites to meet in.

Guess the date of construction of this circle of standing stones.

3,000 BC? 2,000 BC?

1,000 BC?

Try 1850.

It was put up by a local enthusiast for all things Druidy.

And he arranged his stones around a natural phenomenon,

an old glacial boulder in the middle there.

But the circle of stones, the design,

was modelled on a genuinely old circle of stones

at Avebury in Wiltshire.

Once it was put up this did, indeed, become a place where Eisteddfods were held.

And it became a tradition that after you'd held a national Eisteddfod

in one place you left behind a circle of stones,

some actually made of stone

and in latter days they were actually made of plastic.

So, oddly enough, Wales does now have a genuine heritage of mystical,

Druidical standing-stone circles

that dates all the way back... to the 19th century.

The Celtic past was influential well beyond Wales.

Artists like Gustav Dore

and Aubrey Beardsley produced works inspired by Tennyson's

monumental Arthurian cycle of poems, The Idylls Of The King.

Some of the very first photographs, produced by Julia Margaret Cameron,

were portraits and entire tableaux inspired by Tennyson's tales.

And the pre-Raphaelite painters revelled in Arthurian scenes,

with their themes of chastity and sensuality,

romance, chivalry and a sense of mission.

But Arthur wasn't the 19th century's only muse.

There was another story that was endlessly reproduced,

Alfred's kitchen catastrophe.

This is the classic version of the Alfred-burns-the-cakes scene

done by David Wilkie in 1806.

Painters loved doing this particular scene. And one of the reasons

was it's a historical painting but there's a chance to do some comedy.

And so Alfred is depicted, literally, with a red face.

He is embarrassed at having made a fool of himself.

And the wife, who is furious and upset, upbraids a man who,

though she doesn't know it, is actually the King.

The man, interestingly, has a sort of half-smile on his face

and he's looking complicitly at Alfred.

"Men, we burn cakes, what do you expect?"

The depiction of Alfred is changing at this period.

This is a more democratic age

and therefore this picture shows him going amongst his people.

When he's scolded by the woman

he doesn't say, "Do you know who I am? I'm the King,"

he accepts the scolding and he learns from it.

And, therefore, Alfred here is a king

who has to acquire the common touch,

a king who has to work out how to co-exist

even with the most humble of his subjects.

With the British Empire spread across the globe,

the Victorians became ever more confident

about their historical self-definition

and their national myth making.

For the first time,

there was space for Arthur and Alfred to share the limelight.

WOMAN SIGHS

With his retinue of knights and bevy of damsels,

Arthur captured sentimental Victorian hearts.

Alfred, on the other hand, appealed to something more muscular.

MAN GRUNTS

The Victorians were happy to believe Alfred had founded

most of the institutions they held dear,

public schools, universities, Parliament, the law, the military.

Alfred was the founding father,

the embodiment of everything that was "great" about Great Britain.

CHEERING

And so the 1,000th anniversary of Alfred's death

was a perfect moment for the good people of Winchester,

ancient capital of Wessex, to honour him properly.

This was the 1901 millenary.

Actually, the anniversary was two years earlier in 1899

and they'd got the date wrong.

But no matter,

it was one of those slightly bonkers occasions at which we British excel.

It's obviously a genuinely popular event,

there are people hanging out the windows, lining up on the roofs.

Everybody in Winchester had a day off.

There were special trains bringing people down from London.

It is meant to be a sort of hugely popular event

to make everybody feel part of the British Empire.

So that's a Highland regiment, I would think, there.

Yes, yes, that's right. There are a lot of different units

both from the army and the navy taking part.

And some of them had been released from service in the Boer War,

because it was just felt so important.

-What, to be here?

-To be here.

-Rather than on the battlefield.

Rather than... Yeah, yeah.

-And there's the statue.

-Oh, yes, I love this one.

Yes, this is one of my favourite ones, because you've got the sculptor Hamo Thornycroft on the left

-and you can see just how big the statue is.

-Hmm.

-And he got damaged.

-Yes, he did.

It slipped at one point and his nose got damaged.

This isn't what you'd expect from Victorian engineering.

No! No. Well, you can see it does look a bit ramshackle,

but they know what they're doing.

You can see he's holding up his sword in a way

that would really be rather dangerous.

-He's making a cross with the hilt.

-Yes, the sword turned into a crucifix.

He is fighting on behalf of Christianity,

so he's a sort of Christian military hero. So he ticks all the boxes.

Unveiling the statue, the former Prime Minister Lord Rosebery

did, however, concede that "the Alfred we reverence may well be

"an idealised figure...an effigy of the imagination".

He'd hit the nail on the head.

The Victorians weren't really saluting Alfred's triumphs,

they were saluting their own.

BIRDSONG

As the 20th century opened,

Alfred's transformation from historical figure

to "effigy of the imagination" was complete.

The poet GK Chesterton explained.

"King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend,

"in the sense that he may possibly be a lie.

"But he is a legend in this broader and more human sense,

"that the legends are the most important things about him."

In 1911, Chesterton published the last great epic English poem,

The Ballad Of The White Horse, and Alfred was its hero.

It was Alfred who had supposedly cut the ancient white horse

into the chalk at Uffington,

even though it actually predated him by more than a thousand years.

In the poem the horse becomes a symbol of England itself.

Alfred is captured, the horse is left unkempt,

but in victory he becomes its caretaker, clearing it of weeds.

This custodial spirit, the poem cautions,

would always be needed to defend Britain in times of danger.

30 years later, when Britain's skies were dark with enemy planes

and the horse itself was hidden to disorientate German pilots above,

an extract of the poem was printed in The Times.

AIR RAID SIREN

"I tell you naught for your comfort, yea, naught for your desire,

"save that the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher.

"Night shall be thrice night over you, and heaven an iron cope.

"Do you have joy without a cause, yea, faith without a hope?"

In the Times article of 1941, not only was the poem quoted

but Alfred was directly invoked by the newspaper.

It carries a report of a great meeting

between ministers of the United Kingdom

and a string of countries that have been invaded by the Nazis.

The Times says, "The spirit of the gathering

"was that of Alfred in Athelney

"and the speech delivered by Mr Churchill,

"so far from betraying apprehension

"or awe at the vast forces of tyranny now trampling over Europe,

"referred to the German Fuhrer only in terms of burning scorn."

Churchill would have loved the comparison to Alfred.

He was bought up in the great heyday of the Victorian Alfred cult

and would have thought of him as the greatest Englishman of all time.

Just as we always invoke Churchill, they always invoked Alfred.

And here they are again. Britain is alone, encircled by its enemies

and fighting a war that seems impossible to win.

So the great Anglo-Saxon warrior

is summoned up to inspire not only his own countrymen

but all free people in their hour of need.

That was Alfred's high point.

After the war, in more uncertain times, such a self-confident king

no longer appealed.

Unlike the more complex and more equivocal Arthur.

ALL CHANT: ..and hear us now

Confirming this our scared vow We swear...

Since the days of the Grail, Arthur had been associated with mysticism.

As Britain experienced a wave of counter-culture at the end of the 20th century,

he was reinvented once more.

Dark Age Arthur became New Age Arthur.

ALL: Heart to heart and hand in hand

Mark, O Spirit, and hear us now

Confirming this, our most sacred vow.

So...how do I address you?

Anyway you like, so long as it's not too early in the morning.

Seriously though, my name is actually Arthur Uther Pendragon.

I'm generally known as King Arthur,

and I'm a senior Druid from Stonehenge and here in Glastonbury.

So is Arthur all right?

Oh, Arthur is absolutely fine.

But you've got to remember there's three Arthurs,

there's three Arthurian ages.

There's a pre-Roman archetypal Welsh, there's a post-Roman Dark Age British

and there's a post-Thatcher and I'm the post-Thatcher.

IAN LAUGHS

Right. Are you literally an embodiment of Arthur?

I believe... I believe I am. The same spirit dwells within.

But I'm not out to convince anyone

that I'm a reincarnation of King Arthur,

I'm just out to say, were King Arthur here now, this is what he'd be doing.

And it obviously is, because it's what I do.

-Anything specific at the moment?

-Erm...

-Any issues that...

-Yes, specific at the moment.

-..Arthur's particularly worried about?

-Yeah, well, what we are doing

is we're marching with the people and the trade unions and we're marching against this government,

because we are against their austerity measures

that are designed to claw back money from those who can least afford it

to prop up to those who least need it.

He always fights for the underdog

and he always fights for what is fair.

Right and fair or, as I call it, truth, honour and justice.

It makes you sound like Batman.

THEY LAUGH

-I've got the cloak!

-THEY LAUGH

There seems little doubt that Arthur will go on and on.

He's spawned video games, TV series and films.

And today you can even experience him

through the medium of online gambling.

The fictional king that Geoffrey of Monmouth

wrote about nearly a thousand years ago

is now a money-spinning global brand.

Factual Alfred will always be more prosaic.

But he is one of the leading poster boys

on Michael Gove's Great British history curriculum.

And he continues to speak from beyond the grave.

Oh, wow!

800 years after canny monks at Glastonbury

dug up their royal treasure trove,

historical societies and TV documentaries

are still playing the same game.

Imagine, the possibility as we stand here is that, you know,

the life and the legend of Alfred the Great comes down to this.

The actual pelvis of King Alfred.

Possibly.

Or...possibly not.

The point is, our need to connect with these ancient heroes

is still strong.

They continue to help us define ourselves.

And this process of historical makeover will undoubtedly continue.

We will be long gone, but new Arthurs and Alfreds will emerge.

As our cycles of need for historical escapism or realism continue,

Arthur is still seen everywhere,

whereas Alfred is back in the library.

But in the past both of our Dark Age superheroes

have been used to comfort, inspire or negotiate change in Britain

and may well be again,

because, looking forwards, my guess is we'll keep looking backwards.

The olden days always have a future.

I'm now looking forward...

to more looking back next time,

when I'll be discovering how modern Britain

is a product of the Victorian obsession with the Middle Ages.

Clear?