Nennius

Nennius (also known as Nemnius or Nemnivus) was a Welsh monk of the 9th century. He has traditionally been attributed with the authorship of the Historia Brittonum, based on the prologue affixed to that work, This attribution is widely considered a secondary (10th century) tradition.

Nennius was a student of Elvodugus, commonly identified with the bishop Elfodd who convinced British ecclesiastics to accept the Continental dating for Easter, and who died in 809 according to the Annales Cambriae.

Nennius is believed to have lived in the area made up by present day Brecknockshire and Radnorshire counties in Powys, Wales. He lived outside the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, isolated by mountains in a rural society. Because of the lack of evidence concerning the life of Nennius he has become the subject of legend himself. Welsh traditions include Nennius with Elbodug and others said to have escaped the massacre of Welsh monks by Ethelfrid in 613, fleeing to the north.

Authorship of Historia Brittonum

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians. The sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthur's name also occurs in early poetic sources such as Y Gododdin.

Arthur is a central figure in the legends making up the so-called Matter of Britain. The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). In some Welsh and Breton tales and poems that date from before this work, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. How much of Geoffrey's Historia (completed in 1138) was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown.

Francis Pryor

Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor, MBE, FSA (born 13 January 1945) is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain. He is best known for his discovery and excavation of Flag Fen, a Bronze Age archaeological site near Peterborough, as well as for his frequent appearances on the Channel 4 television series Time Team.

Born to a Burke's Landed Gentry family, Pryor studied at Eton College before going on to study archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge. With his first wife, he moved to Canada, where he worked as a technician at the Royal Ontario Museum for a year before returning to England.

He has now retired from full-time field archaeology, but still appears on television and writes books as well as being a working sheep farmer.

Biography

Pryor is the son of Barbara Helen Robertson and Robert Matthew Marlborough Pryor MBE TD (known as Matthew), as well as being the grandson of Walter Marlborough Pryor DSO DL JP; both his father and grandfather had been British Army officers, serving in the First and Second World Wars respectively. He was educated at Temple Grove School in East Sussex, then at Eton College alongside his first cousin William Pryor, before studying archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a PhD in 1985.