The death of King Arthur - Simon Armitage

The Alliterative Morte Arthure - the title given to a
four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400 - was part of a
medieval Arthurian revival which produced such masterpieces as Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory's prose Morte
D'Arthur. The Death
of King Arthur deals in the cut-and-thrust of warfare and politics:
the ever-topical matter of Britain's relationship with continental
Europe, and of its military interests overseas.

Simon Armitage is already the master of this
alliterative music, as his earlier version of Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight (2006) so resourcefully and exuberantly showed. His new
translation restores a neglected masterpiece of story-telling, by
bringing vividly to life its entirely medieval mix of ruthlessness and
restraint.