COMING SOON: MY ANSWER TO GUY HALSALL'S NEGATIVISTIC APPROACH TO ARTHURIAN RESEARCH

                                                      Professor Grumpy aka Guy Halsall
                                          https://www.york.ac.uk/history/staff/profiles/halsall/

I've recently become aware of Prof. Guy Halsall's attack on my own work in the Arthurian field.  While doing a random Google and Wayback Machine search for my lost essay "Thomas Green Versus King Arthur", I came across this:

https://edgyhistorian.blogspot.com/2013/10/worlds-of-arthur-traditionalists-strike.html

<Smells like Stag Spirit.

I have said before that no one made themselves look good by responding to a bad review but this one is so ridiculous and offensive, and misleading to the genuinely interested that it requires a riposte.  I don't know where this near-libelous drivel originally appeared except that it is set out as though it is in an academic journal.  The link is to a page on the blog of Arthurian fantasist Augustus Hunt (real name: Daniel Hunt - you can do your own bit of psychoanalysis about the name-change; the tenor of Hunt's own pseudo-historical ramblings can soon be gauged from those included on the blog).  Suffice it to say that pretty much every 'fact' or 'error' listed by the clearly-delusional Breeze* is nothing of the sort, but is simply a construct of his own invention.  There is no proof for any of them.>

Now, the relevant URL I cited in my Stagspirit blog (Halsall was unaware that I had rendered in English a variant of the tarw ellyll or 'bull spectre' found in the Welsh Triads as 'carw ellyll', which is quite properly translated as 'stag spirit' or similar) merely presented Dr. Andrew Breeze's review of Halsall's own book THE WORLDS OF ARTHUR.  I myself sometimes agree with Dr. Breeze, but more often than not I disagree with him.

One thing I never do, however, is stoop so low as to make fun of someone's name!  One would expect more dignified behavior from a distinguished academician. To begin, I never called myself Augustus.  That is purely a creation of Halsall.  Second, August IS MY ACTUAL LEGAL MIDDLE NAME, GIVEN TO ME AT BIRTH BY MY PARENTS.  I use it as my writing name, since I merely like the sound of it better than 'Daniel Hunt.'  To suggest that I use "August[us]" for some egotistical reason is, well, quite absurd.  And the charge that I do so is, frankly, offensive.

He makes one more-or-less correct statement in his personal slurring of me:  I could be described as a "fantasist", in that I have published a dark fantasy novel (non-Arthurian in theme) and am now gearing up to write my first Arthurian novella in a series entitled THE DARK AVALON BOOKS.  His implication, however, is that it is my Arthurian nonfiction work that is to be considered fantasy.  He doubtless wants people to think that this is so, despite the fact that to the best of my knowledge he has never seen fit to address ANYTHING contained in my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY.  I suspect he has not even bothered to read it.  

But I have come to expect this kind of treatment from the closed-minded, highly defensive Old Guard in the field of Arthurian Studies.  Halsall appears to be no different than his cronies in this respect.  Because he has taken it upon himself to make such false and outlandish statements - all based on ignorance - and has taken the low road of a "hater/troll"-like attack upon a perceived opponent, I have decided to re-read his WORLDS OF ARTHUR and to comment in detail on the conclusions he reaches in his book.

Unlike Halsall, I will refrain from addressing the author personally.  I will restrict myself only to a critical analysis of the negativistic approach which manifests itself in his work.   When this review is complete I will post it here as a separate blog entry.

P.S.  I've not yet lost hope of retrieving my lost essay on Thomas Green, a proponent of the "mythical Arthur" theory.  If I do manage to extract it from an old machine, I will be posting that here as a blog entry as well.