Anyone interested in Arthurian Studies will know of the central role played by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the development and spread of the Arthurian legend from Britain to medieval Europe. But Geoffrey's material, both his History of the Kings of Britain and his Life of Merlin, went far beyond Arthur and his deeds: it presented, for the first time, a coherent and proud account of Britain's early history, from its foundation to its eclipse at the hands of the Anglo-Saxons. The extent to which the enigmatic Geoffrey, at once an astonishingly diligent researcher and a shameless inventor of fact, tr