From Malory to Monty Python, the eternal chalice – said to be the very cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper – has become enshrined as one of popular culture’s most spiritual icons.

But while Scotland has been given the credit for being the Grail’s final resting place – thanks largely to Dan Brown’s hugely-successful novel The Da Vinci Code – a new book by a Welsh academic says Wales’ claim to the relic is stronger.

As part of a major conference into the legend, academics say that if the king ever existed he was probably from Wales with strong links to Brittany, in northern France.

And far from being English – a ploy, they say, to appeal to nationalist sentiment – he would actually have been the sworn enemy of the Anglo-Saxons.

The organisers of the event at Rennes University, in Brittany, say the fable of Arthur and Camelot has been continually updated by English nationalists keen to bring back the Age of Chivalry.

A major exhibition on the Arthurian tales, which will run for six months, is to open July 15, fully translated into English, the same day the International Arthurian Society begins it’s 22nd annual congress at Rennes university, one of the biggest campuses in France.

Philip Reeve was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Here Lies Arthur, an adventure story for teenagers.

The legendary figure of King Arthur is presented in Reeve’s tale as a war-mongering, self-interested “thug”.

In partnership with The French National Library the exhibition traces the cultural history of the Arthurian myth and has been nominated as an “Exhibition of National Interest” by the Ministry of Culture.

“All three drove furiously towards Cruachan”, photo W H Margetson

Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race

Written by M I Ebbutt and with 51 illustrations, like the one to the left, this book tells stories from the 8th Century onwards. The book also includes a prose version of “The Countess Cathleen”, a play by W B Yeats. The preface says:

In refashioning, for the pleasure of readers of the twentieth century, these versions of ancient tales which have given pleasure to story-lovers of all centuries from the eighth onward, I feel that some explanation of my choice is necessary. Men’s conceptions of the heroic change with changing years, and vary with each individual mind; hence it often happens that one person sees in a legend only the central heroism, while another sees only the inartistic details of mediæval life which tend to disguise and warp the heroic quality.

Armitage rises to the challenge of translating this mysterious tale of chivalry, supernatural forces and seduction.