On Wednesday 7th November 1917, Flinders Petrie, a renowned archaeologist of the day, addressed the assembled members of the British Academy. He was to present a paper to them entitled Neglected British History, in which he drew attention to the fact that a considerable body of historical documentary source-material was being overlooked if not willfully ignored by modern historians.1 He drew fleeting attention to the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth and then homed in on one particular record that shed much light upon Geoffrey's too-disparaged history. The ancient book to which he drew attention
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