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The Crimson Chalice trilogy #2
The Circle of the Gods
The Circle of the Gods tells the story of the childhood and unruly youth of Arturo (Arthur), born in the fifth century to a Roman girl and the son of a tribal chieftain in the far West of Britain. The last Roman legions had long been withdrawn, leaving the land a prize to be fought over by rival British warlords and Saxon invaders. It takes him into early manhood and to the beginning of his tremendous mission to create his own army and to mount a crusade against all odds to check the Saxon advance and to begin the restoration of the country's greatness. Victor Canning brings to this re-creation of the youth of Arthur the same qualities of imagination and narrative skill which distinguished The Crimson Chalice, of which The Observer "Fine bardic stuff that invests the old myths with the freshness of the morning and leaves one hungry for more."
178 pages, Hardcover
First published October 17, 1977
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About the author
Victor Canning
165 books59 followersVictor Canning was a prolific writer of novels and thrillers who flourished in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, but whose reputation has faded since his death in 1986. He was personally reticent, writing no memoirs and giving relatively few newspaper interviews.
Canning was born in Plymouth, Devon, the eldest child of a coach builder, Fred Canning, and his wife May, née Goold. During World War I his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders, while he with his two sisters went to live in the village of Calstock ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railways and later became station master. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid 1920s they moved to Oxford where his father had found work, and Victor attended the Oxford Central School. Here he was encouraged to stay on at school and go to university by a classical scholar, Dr. Henderson, but the family could not afford it and instead Victor went to work as a clerk in the education office at age 16.
Within three years he had started selling short stories to boys’ magazines and in 1934, his first novel. Mr. Finchley Discovers his England, was accepted by Hodder and Stoughton and became a runaway best seller. He gave up his job and started writing full time, producing thirteen more novels in the next six years under three different names. Lord Rothermere engaged him to write for the Daily Mail, and a number of his travel articles for the Daily Mail were collected as a book with illustrations by Leslie Stead under the title Everyman's England in 1936. He also continued to write short stories.
He married Phyllis McEwen in 1935, a girl from a theatrical family whom he met while she was working with a touring vaudeville production at Weston-super-Mare. They had three daughters, Lindel born in 1939, Hilary born in 1940, and Virginia who was born in 1942, but died in infancy.
In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. Canning worked in anti-aircraft batteries in the south of England until early 1943, when he was sent to North Africa and took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian campaigns. At the end of the war he was assigned to an Anglo-American unit doing experimental work with radar range-finding. It was top secret work but nothing to do with espionage, though Canning never discouraged the assumption of publishers and reviewers that his espionage stories were partly based on experience. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major.
He resumed writing with The Chasm (1947), a novel about identifying a Nazi collaborator who has hidden himself in a remote Italian village. A film of this was planned but never finished. Canning’s next book, Panther’s Moon, was filmed as Spy Hunt, and from now on Canning was established as someone who could write a book a year in the suspense genre, have them reliably appear in book club and paperback editions on both sides of the Atlantic, be translated into the main European languages, and in many cases get filmed. He himself spent a year in Hollywood working on scripts for movies of his own books and on TV shows. The money earned from the film of The Golden Salamander (filmed with Trevor Howard) meant that Canning could buy a substantial country house with some land in Kent, Marle Place, where he lived for nearly twenty years and where his daughter continues to live now. From the mid 1950s onwards his books became more conventional, full of exotic settings, stirring action sequences and stock characters. In 1965 he began a series of four books featuring a private detective called Rex Carver, and these were among his most successful in sales terms.
He died in 1986.
Canning was born in Plymouth, Devon, the eldest child of a coach builder, Fred Canning, and his wife May, née Goold. During World War I his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders, while he with his two sisters went to live in the village of Calstock ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railways and later became station master. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid 1920s they moved to Oxford where his father had found work, and Victor attended the Oxford Central School. Here he was encouraged to stay on at school and go to university by a classical scholar, Dr. Henderson, but the family could not afford it and instead Victor went to work as a clerk in the education office at age 16.
Within three years he had started selling short stories to boys’ magazines and in 1934, his first novel. Mr. Finchley Discovers his England, was accepted by Hodder and Stoughton and became a runaway best seller. He gave up his job and started writing full time, producing thirteen more novels in the next six years under three different names. Lord Rothermere engaged him to write for the Daily Mail, and a number of his travel articles for the Daily Mail were collected as a book with illustrations by Leslie Stead under the title Everyman's England in 1936. He also continued to write short stories.
He married Phyllis McEwen in 1935, a girl from a theatrical family whom he met while she was working with a touring vaudeville production at Weston-super-Mare. They had three daughters, Lindel born in 1939, Hilary born in 1940, and Virginia who was born in 1942, but died in infancy.
In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. Canning worked in anti-aircraft batteries in the south of England until early 1943, when he was sent to North Africa and took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian campaigns. At the end of the war he was assigned to an Anglo-American unit doing experimental work with radar range-finding. It was top secret work but nothing to do with espionage, though Canning never discouraged the assumption of publishers and reviewers that his espionage stories were partly based on experience. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major.
He resumed writing with The Chasm (1947), a novel about identifying a Nazi collaborator who has hidden himself in a remote Italian village. A film of this was planned but never finished. Canning’s next book, Panther’s Moon, was filmed as Spy Hunt, and from now on Canning was established as someone who could write a book a year in the suspense genre, have them reliably appear in book club and paperback editions on both sides of the Atlantic, be translated into the main European languages, and in many cases get filmed. He himself spent a year in Hollywood working on scripts for movies of his own books and on TV shows. The money earned from the film of The Golden Salamander (filmed with Trevor Howard) meant that Canning could buy a substantial country house with some land in Kent, Marle Place, where he lived for nearly twenty years and where his daughter continues to live now. From the mid 1950s onwards his books became more conventional, full of exotic settings, stirring action sequences and stock characters. In 1965 he began a series of four books featuring a private detective called Rex Carver, and these were among his most successful in sales terms.
He died in 1986.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 7, 2021
This is a fake trilogy!!! The entire 78 pages of this book, the second in this supposed trilogy, were lifted word for word and page for page as "an excerpt" from The Crimson Chalice. Huge disappointment. It is a scam to call this a trilogy because it is not. Very deceptive marketing for sure.
October 17, 2018
It is rare that I rate a book one star, but alas, there is nothing I can do. This may be inpart to my semi-noninterest in King Arthur but I think it had a lot more to do with the writing. First of all, the entire beginning of the book was very confusing. Yes, there needs to be some allure in a novel, but I feel this lacked some explaination. More importantly, to me, it was very dry, dragged tremendously and rarely have any flaire. While I enjoyed hisattempt at recreating a King Arthur like experience, I do not think he reached his potential.
November 24, 2014
Originally published on my blog here in October 1999.
The second of Canning's Arthurian trilogy tells the story of Arthur's growing up, until his twenties and early fame as a war leader. The traditional story is pretty much ignored, with only the odd character whose name suggests the standard legends. (Instead of Lancelot, for example, we have a character named Lancelo.)
The simplicity of the plot of The Circle of the Gods - the title comes from the name used by Canning for Stonehenge - brings improvements with it over the first book of the trilogy. Canning is clearly more comfortable with a fairly straightforward description of action, and the descent into bad poetry which marred The Crimson Chalice is mercifully absent.
Nevertheless, characters remain two-dimensional and the fifth century background incidental.
The second of Canning's Arthurian trilogy tells the story of Arthur's growing up, until his twenties and early fame as a war leader. The traditional story is pretty much ignored, with only the odd character whose name suggests the standard legends. (Instead of Lancelot, for example, we have a character named Lancelo.)
The simplicity of the plot of The Circle of the Gods - the title comes from the name used by Canning for Stonehenge - brings improvements with it over the first book of the trilogy. Canning is clearly more comfortable with a fairly straightforward description of action, and the descent into bad poetry which marred The Crimson Chalice is mercifully absent.
Nevertheless, characters remain two-dimensional and the fifth century background incidental.
April 24, 2014
Not the best of the trilogy, but still an entertaining yarn
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews