FROM CAESAR TO ARTHUR SIR,—Answering a review is, in most
cases, a pointless incivility. But I feel bound to comment briefly on Lord Raglan's criticisms of From Caesar to Arthur, since (no doubt unintentionally) they give a quite wrong impression.
Most of the main points to which the distinguished author takes exception are not mine at all. They are simply copied from the best available historians over the last thirty years. The extreme probability of the historicity of Arthur and Hengist is accepted, I be- lieve, by pretty well everybody—Collingwood and Myrcs, Oman. Hodgkin, the Chadwicks, Blair, Jack- son and others—as will be apparent from my text. notes and bibliography. The 'editing and theorising' regarding the Wessex annals is not mine; it is taken from the principal modern historians of the Anglo- Saxons; so is the inference from improbability con- cerning Aelle. Further instances might be added.
Lord Raglan has a perfect right to his own views, but let us be clear about the issue. His statement, in the form it takes, is not merely a rejection of me— which would not matter. It is a rejection of virtually every authority in the field—which strikes me as mattering a good deal.—Yours faithfully,
GEOFFREY ASIIE
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