Hollywood’s blockbusting King Arthur claims to be historically valid, but is it more about modern times, asks Stewart Lee

Like all good mythical heroes, King Arthur is all things to all men. For the poets of the Middle Ages, his legend provided the perfect empty vessel into which to pour the ideals of “courtly love”. For Henry II, who attempted to legitimise his own rule via Arthurian precedents established in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s semi-spurious Historia Regum Britanniae, Arthur was a political propaganda tool. For the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, who fabricated Arthur’s tomb sometime in the late 12th century with an eye on box-office receipts of their own, Arthur was a money-spinning tourist attraction. And for an antiques dealer I got talking to in a field in Cornwall 20 years ago, Arthur was his personal friend, who had told him in a vision at Stonehenge that he would return and wreak havoc should the Tories get re-elected. They did and Arthur didn’t.
For the screenwriter David Franzoni, who comes to the producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s King Arthur with credits for Gladiator and Jumping Jack Flash, Arthur is a metaphor for American Vietnam GIs. But his script has a unique selling point that no other modern interpretation of the Arthurian story can lay claim to. It says it’s true.

Almost nothing is known of the historical King Arthur. Most writers, whether they are suspicious academics or the excitable enthusiasts who fuel the vast Arthurian publishing industry, agree that the few scant references to similarly named soldiers in near- contemporary texts, most notably Gildas’s 6th-century De Excidio Britanniae, suggest “Arthur” was a dux bellorum, a military leader in 5th-century Roman Britain. His subsequent fame saw his life story subsumed into Celtic myth, then elaborated into chivalric medieval romances, the most famous of which is Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.

Disney takes the legend to the maximus - Sean Macaulay

IN THE NEW film King Arthur, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the monarch is recast as the half-Roman leader of knights who rescue innocent Britons from marauding Saxons. He is carefully set up as the great but reluctant warrior, like Russell Crowe’s Maximus in Gladiator.

“I want peace,” Arthur says wearily. He has the childhood wound of a slain parent (attacking horsemen, flaming hay cart, slow-motion cry of “Nooooooo”) and tired eyes that have seen too much. In the love scene, he has a torso with many scars.

The film is the chance for Clive Owen (Croupier) to become an international star. One only wishes that he had injected more tension into his admirably still underplaying. He barks when needed, but his quiet moments seem inert, even though he’s ageing ruggedly and has never been better photographed. But he needs that unimpeachable authority one finds in Sean Connery and Richard Burton; Ioan Gruffudd, as Lancelot, has much more oratorical heft.

Halfway through, the film can’t decide if its quest is a get-the-villagers-to-safety mission or something more complex, like the doomed last hurrah of The Wild Bunch. It is not for lack of noble intentions. All the stars are European and the legend of Camelot, last seen in the cartoonish First Knight, has been discarded for “recently discovered” historical fact.

The script works hard to fill in the political picture of Britain’s Roman occupation, laying out the conflicts between the Woads, Sarmatians and the Saxons. But this amounts to over-ornate footwork to ensure that Arthur’s knights are in servitude to the Romans and can therefore fight for the one value that works for all modern audiences — freedom.

Mel Gibson spent half of Braveheart yelling the word and Owen’s Arthur is no different. Surrounded by colonial tyranny, he is the visionary who believes in equality for all, an enlightened Christian who will take a pagan bride (Keira Knightley as a Xena, Warrior Princess of a Guinevere, complete with Woad war paint).

Like Crowe’s Maximus, Arthur has an ideal concept of Rome, which is shaken by the reality. He outgrows his political leaders. That is quite a departure for a Bruckheimer action hero. They are mavericks, as in Top Gun and Bad Boys, but are otherwise unquestioning reactionaries.

How I learnt to lance... a lot -- Damian Whitworth

As the new movie King Arthur reignites interest in medieval jousting tournaments, our reporter dons 15th-century armour and finds that there's something of the knight about him - but not much

THERE ARE two misapprehensions under which it is inadvisable to labour if you should decide to enter the world of Arthurian re-enactment. The first is that dressing up as a knight in shining armour is just a bit of a play-acting lark and not to be taken seriously. The second is that nobody gets horribly hurt.

King Arthur is back. The film, starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, which opens next week, has spawned extensive analysis of the place of Arthurian legend in our cultural landscape. But for some battle-hardened dreamers he never went away.

We are talking about knights. Not knights of the realm, those time-serving MPs and civil servants, businessmen and veteran pop stars whose status has recently been called into doubt by proposals to overhaul the honours system. But proper knights. Those valiant warriors who understand the true meaning of honour and duty and what it meant to be abroad in the days when men were men and dragons were scared.

These knights errant venture forth every summer to tour Albion and keep alive the ancient arts of war through the booming historical re-enactment industry. In this season of historical blockbusters, I was charged with trying to cut it as an action hero; an unfit, modern male, totally unschooled in combat, facing the harsh and humiliating realities of knight life.

On a blustery and showery day I find myself at Scarborough Castle, with Alan Larson and his troop of knights. Larson is an events consultant for English Heritage and travels the country staging battles and tournaments. Next month he will be mounting what is being billed as Britain’s biggest historical action event at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire. This will feature 3,000 performers and span two millennia, from Boadicea’s final battle to the Great War. Napoleon and King Arthur will be among those leading their troops into a specially built arena.

Larson’s men can do you any knight you like. In the film King Arthur is a Roman-British warlord whose knights are Sarmatian mercenaries. Sometimes Larson’s men stage battles from that era and they could also offer you a Celtic Arthur. But today they are recreating a 15th-century tournament which plays out romantic fantasies based on the ideals of Christian knights immortalised by Mallory in Le Morte d’Arthur.

Larson won’t let me just waltz in and become a knight straight away. First I have to don woollen hose and doublet, a pair of flimsy late-medieval style boots and a ridiculous Robin Hood hat. “You’re a squire,” he says. “An apprentice knight. Basically you run around after people. Do you need the glasses? In terms of visual impact they’re not very convincing.” I assure him that without them I would be even less convincing. He sends me off to acclimatise to the 15th century by trying my hand at juggling with the medieval jester and playing the hurdy gurdy, a curious droning instrument that unaccountably fell out of fashion.

After an hour I have authentically soggy feet and am worryingly comfortable and unselfconscious in my preposterous kit. I am taken to meet the knights.

Their leader is Nick Musson, who for the past decade has run the Free Fighters Guild, teaching actors, re-enactors and anyone who is interested in period fighting using swords and other metal weapons. Much of what he teaches comes from years of studying medieval fighting manuals.

For him this is a full-time job. His group of a dozen fighting men are semi-professionals who hold down other jobs as well. They spend the summer touring the country from castle to country house to festival, much as 15th-century knights did the rounds of tournaments. The medieval style tournament tents pitched along the edge of the clifftop field at Scarborough are not just for show. This is where they sleep after a long hard day in armour followed by a few beers.

Their performances too, he explains, are similar to those in the 15th century, when tournaments were sport, “the equivalent of modern day football matches. People in the crowd would have favourite knights and cheer their colours.”

The difference between original knights and their imitators is that the former were “trained to kill. Tournaments were light relief from the business of war.” Musson and his gang have been training together for several years, but he dismisses this is as nothing compared to the experience of medieval warriors and speaks in awed tones of their pedigree.

Training started at the age of 10, when a boy chosen to become a knight was removed from his home and sent to live with a liege lord and start his weapons training. He would graduate from valet to squire and be accepted into the knighthood only when he was between 18 and 21.

“They would have been incredibly fit and healthy. If I met one of them today they would probably take me apart in 30 seconds,” Musson says. Given that he is a barrel of muscle and looks capable of dismembering a weed like myself with his bare hands while carrying on a conversation and probably doing the crossword, he is either being modest about how he would shape up to his medieval forebears, or they truly were terrifying. Musson shows off a fearsome array of weapons including swords, great swords, war hammers, poleaxes, maces and the Lucerne hammer, which is “designed for getting through armour and doing generally nasty things to the body”. All the weapons have blunted edges. This was also the case in medieval tournaments, where deaths did occasionally occur, for the most part by accident.

He hands me a “hand and a half”, also known as a “bastard sword”; a 3ft (90cm) weapon which is between a sword and a great sword and would have been used both at tournaments and on the battlefield. He shows me how to grip with the right hand and use the left to steady the blade and drive the cutting action. He demonstrates some moves with his own blade, bringing it within an inch or two of my head in swift, unnerving movements. There is general amusement at my obvious unease.

I get a half-hour lesson in basic moves. Musson cheerfully punctuates his lesson with descriptions of how a cut will “take stuff out” and explanations of how to “get in close and pick-axe him” and “if you get a hit in the tatters it’s going to hurt whatever you’ve got there”. The strategy, in its simplest form, is to bring an opponent down, preferably with some hideous blow to the head, and then get at his throat to finish him.

Time to suit up. Out comes a full harness of armour made from mild steel. This replica suit cost around £3,000. The real thing, forged from case-hardened steel in the 15th century, would have been extremely expensive. “The equivalent of a good Ferrari,” says Musson. The finest harnesses took between nine months and a year to make.

It takes half an hour to buckle me up, one piece at a time. The breast plate is tight and I have to breathe in like a damsel trying to squeeze into a chastity belt. But the overwhelming problem is the weight. It is hard work taking just a few steps. “A fit man should be able to do a cartwheel,” observes Musson. “For you it’s an alien experience. But to them it was just like putting on a suit of clothes.”

Despite the burden, there is no doubt that wearing armour lends you a sense of medieval manhood. Suddenly you have arms like Schwarzenegger’s that can’t hang down straight at your sides. As far as you can move at all it is with a swagger.

“This is great!” I say. “I feel invincible.” I ask Musson how I would fare now if I was dumped in the middle of a medieval battle in full armour and the very basics of sword handling. “Oh, it would be over in 15 seconds,” he says matter-of-factly. “You’d put this on, head into battle and then you’d be dead. A brief but glorious career.”

The centrepiece of the tournament is jousting and Larson wants to determine what my horsemanship is like. I have been on a horse only once before and it was a miserable experience. I have never understood how men can overcome the challenge posed by our anatomical design in order to sit on a horse without suffering extreme discomfort and endangering the gene pool.

It takes three people to heave me, swearing, into the saddle and the look of horror on my face as the horse is led around the field convinces them to haul me down sharpish. There is no way I can attempt jousting.

Walking is hard enough. The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz moved with infinitely more ease and certainly fewer curses. I am dripping with so much sweat I’m worried the whole suit will rust up and I’ll be stuck inside for ever. The helmet is fantastically heavy and bears down painfully on my skull. It is all I can do to keep my head upright. Nevertheless, I am expected to partcipate in the tournament. I am to engage in some hand to hand combat.

“None of the fights is choreographed,” explains Nick Musson ominously. “We try to make it as close to reality as we possibly can without actually killing each other. It turns into pantomime if you don’t do it with any serious intent.”

In my case, however, he will make an exception. We practise a few moves and then I stand out of the way as they get ready to do business. Although they are out of earshot of the public the knight marshal, who runs the show, addresses them all as if they are knights and squires, barking orders and ensuring that they all have the correct gear. Fantasy and reality have begun to blur. Then the knights gallop into the arena in front of a crowd of several hundred paying visitors. They canter around shooting wild boar (stuffed sacks dragged behind horses) with bows and arrows. Then they start fighting.

This is absolutely astonishing. They go at it as if they are really trying to beat seven shades out of each other. They score points for each “palpable hit” and there is no doubt they are fighting to win. Between bouts they stagger over to where I am standing and a maid in period costume pours a flagon of water down them, as if they are prize fighters. These hugely fit men are breathing hard from the effort.

When Musson comes over I point out that he has a small trickle of blood on his chin. “Have I? he says. “It’s just a nick. Nothing.”

When the fighting is over and a winner is declared, the compere explains that a journalist from The Times has agreed, “in a faking it kind of way” to take on one of the knights. But standing in the arena is a knight I do not recognise with his visor down. “That’s not Nick,” I say to the knight marshal, unable to mask the panic in my voice. “No,” he says impatiently. “Nick has gone to hospital with a horrendous neck wound. Come on, you’re on.”

As I creak into the middle I wave my sword in the air feebly and try to rally the crowd behind me. They look back, bemused. My fear is that the knight I am now challenging doesn’t know about our choreographed routine. Alan had told me to go at Nick with “everything you’ve got”, but what if this guy fights back?

I attempt to butterfly dance around him, Muhammad Ali style. Perhaps the crowd laugh but I can’t hear above the sound of my pumping heart. He comes at me. There is nothing for it, but to abandon all attempt at dignity and leg it. I must look like someone trying to sprint through treacle. I recall Musson warning me that this is a fatal mistake: “If anyone gets behind you, you’re knackered.” So I turn to face him. We exchange a couple of gentle blows and then he raises his sword and I catch a glimpse of his terrible intent. And then he crumples to the ground and pretends to die. Just for once, a moment of the hated pantomime has been allowed into the show. The crowd give a little cheer. They’re a generous lot in North Yorkshire. I take myself off to a far corner of the field where I can remove the armour without everyone seeing how wobbly my legs are.

Later I speak to Nick Musson. He required 11 stitches in a wound caused when his opponent caught him on the lower jaw and neck with a glaive, a 6ft weapon incorporating a huge knife on a pole. He had not been wearing a bevor, the piece of armour that protects the throat. He calls it an “unfortunate incident” and is back fighting the next day.

He explains that he was born in the wrong age. “It’s something I am often lamenting. I would have been very, very at home in medieval times. As a sword master you would have lived well. Put up in a wealthy nobleman’s house, fed and watered, had your own quarters. It would have been the ideal profession.”

"Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past so long as there is wrong left unredressed on earth"

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875)

Festival of History will be at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, August 7-8. Visitors with Arthurian tendencies can wear armour and try a “hand and a half” sword or have a go at children’s jousting. Call 0870 3331183.