The main thesis of The Keys to Avalon: the true location of Arthur’s Kingdom revealed (Blake, S & Lloyd, S; Shaftesbury: Element, 2000) is that ‘the stories about Arthur and Avalon are rooted firmly within historical events which took place within a precise geographical setting in Wales’. They believe that the origin of the belief in Arthur as a pan-British leader with roots in Cornwall is in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘mistranslation’ of placenames given by his source in Middle Welsh. They use information from other Welsh medieval sources to suggest an alternative geography for ‘Dark Age’ Britain, one that locates the Arthurian legends in Wales.
