On a rainy day in April, sat in a Boston Tea Party, Faye Reeve sits face to face with the reincarnation of King Arthur Pendragon.
Born in Wakefield and given the birth name “John Timothy Rothwell”, Arthur Uther Pendragon changed his name to that of the medieval legend King Arthur in 1986. Arthur is a druid activist, campaigning for the rights of nature and druids since the 90’s. He gained notoriety due to his claim that he is the reincarnation of King Arthur.
First mentioned in the 1st century BC, Druidry is a spiritual or religious movement devoted to worshiping and being connected with nature and the seasons. To put it simply. They’re often referred to as wise men, philosophers and the first wizards.
We met in Sailsbury’s Boston Tea Party, I offered to buy him a coffee. After I brought him his americano with milk on the side, he starts off:
“Two things. One, How much research have you done? Two, How much do you know about me?” I knew a fair bit.
“An hour on Youtube and a Wikipedia page” I reply, expecting a myth dispelling talk or some sort of personal disclaimer.
“Right, have you got a tenner on you?” I did in fact have a tenner. “Give me the tenner. Trust me.” I was questioning my trust of the Druid dressed in leather and motorcycle boots. “Give me a tenner” he insisted. I thought he was going to do a magic trick or point out some hidden message on the note.
“If you go on Amazon, this will cost you 20 quid. But I’m going to give it to you for 10” He proceeds to pull out a copy of his autobiography “The trials of Arthur”, which I agreed to buy in exchange for a personal message inside the front cover. He shoved a £23 note with his face in there for me, and an extra one for my mum.
Obviously, my initial question was how and why do you declare yourself as the reincarnation of King Arthur? He explained that there’s been three Arthur’s and three Arthurian ages;
- There’s a Pre-Roman archetypal Welsh
- There’s a Post-Roman dark age British
- And there’s a Post-Thatcher
Himself being the third, Post-Thatcher Arthur.
“I’m not out to say or convince anybody that the same spirit dwells within all three. Or that I’m channeling the spirit or that I’m a reincarnation of the spirit. But what I am saying is, I’m the modern Arthur. I’ve got the modern Excalibur. I’m the modern one, as it were.
“I’m a modern Arthur. Am I not your king, her king, her king? But I’m a king called Arthur in the 20th century. And I’m generally known as King Arthur. The beast known as King Arthur. So I am a modern King Arthur. I’ve got a sword that’s called Excalibur. And it’s a modern Excalibur. And now this is the thing, dual justification”.
Arthur also wields a sword, by the same name as King Arthurs; “excalibur”. He won the right to wear it in a court of law, as well as the right to swear on it.
“I’m not going to swear on a Bible, I’m not Christian. I’m not going to swear on a Quran, I’m not a Muslim. I won’t swear on anything that Judaism will swear on. Only thing I can swear on as a druid sword bearer is my sword. And so I and my order, or members of my order, will swear on my sword. So my sword has to go to court.”
Arthur was arrested with Excalibur on a March supporting the Liverpool Dockers up in London where they took the sword off him.
“I came up in court at Reading, charged with something else. And there was three of us in court. So, three Druids, and we all got off, we all got not guilty. But before the court case, I said to the judge, I need my sword, I want to swear on my sword. And the judge said, well, I have nothing against that. I said, there is a problem. What’s that? Bow Street Magistrates had it, and it’s at Charing Cross Police Station. Right, he says. So he directed the officer of the court, a police officer, to go up and get it. So we could swear on it in court the next day.
“Anyway, this is a story that the police told me, right? So he goes up, he gets up to Charing Cross Police Station, and they said, fuck off we’re not giving you a sword.
“So he gets in the car and he drives back to the court. Well, as soon as he’s left the police station, they’ve realized, in the bit of paper here, was a letter from a judge, this is a court order that they’re going against.
“And so custody sergeant says, I fucked up. Get in your car, get that sword down before he gets there. So the story goes, right, And it was Thames Valley Police that told me this. They raced down the M4 with a blue light flashing, my sword on the back seat, just to get my sword to court. So they didn’t get done for contempt of court. Powerful sword, man.”
But I had to enquire, how did he come across excalibur, how does one find themselves in possession of a sword?
“I bought it in a shop, this is the 20th century. But I always say I had to draw it through the stonework of London, that was the court case.”
With such a strong set of beliefs I was curious as to how Arthur got into druidry in the first place.
“I was invited to a Glastonbury tour to meet up with the druids in about 1990. Talking to one of the young druids and he said, what are you doing? I said I’m up at Stonehenge. He said, what are you doing there? I said I’m picketing, trying to get it opened up because I’m against the exclusion zone. I’m living in a hammock which is swung between a dead tree and a living tree. He said, bloody hell, you’re more of a druid than I am. And I thought, actually, I am a druid. And it wasn’t until then I realised I was a druid. I just hadn’t put a name on it.”
In the 90’s Stonehenge protesting the exclusion zone on summer solstice was an annual event for Arthur. On one particular arrest in the mid 90’s the court attempted to trial Arthur with the Criminal Justice Act
“I was the first arrest under the new Criminal Justice Act at Stonehenge for the new charge of trespassory assembly. So they’d done me for trespassory assembly. I was the first charged, and I was the first not guilty.”
Arthur accredits his not guilty status to John Wadham, the director of National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), offering him a young Kier Stammer as his barrister working pro bono as the NCCL wanted him to win this case as a mark of precedent for future cases.
As well as protest Arthur also has a career in politics, running independently in Salisbury from 2010 until the last election in 2024.
“If you don’t like what’s on offer, get out there and do it yourself. I got fed up with all my mates saying ‘oh there’s no one to vote for, I can’t be arsed’. So I said alright, vote for me. Of course most of them were stoned and didn’t turn up. I always stand on a point of principle, what really annoyed me was people who didn’t vote and moan constantly. Stand up and do it yourself, so that’s what I do. That’s what got me into it.”
I was curious though, Arthur was running with no manifesto, what actually were his political beliefs and policies?
“I wouldn’t do anything because I’m an independent. I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d fight for Sailsbury and wouldn’t give a damn about anywhere else. And that’s what I believe everybody should do. I reckon the MP for Liverpool should stand up for Liverpool. The MP for Manchester should stand up for the issues of Manchester above. And that’s what I believe in, free independent politics. So that’s what I do. I just stand up for the people of Salisbury.”
His first time running he pushed the BNP back into last place. Arthur ran into the BNP candidate that year in town “he stumbles up to me at the town and says, I’m an ex-councillor from, I don’t know, somewhere in Cornwall or whatever. My claim to fame is I’ve never come last. I said, you will this time. I beat him by six votes. Ever since then, I’ve embarrassed myself in last place. But I don’t care because I’ve increased my vote every single time.”
Arthur also writes an unpaid political column for the Sailsbury and Avon Gazette.
“But here is something that will surprise you” he tells me, before whipping out an old National Union of Journalists (NUJ) ID card with his face on. It looked retro. The date was scratched out.
“Well, that’s an old one, and the reason the nail file mark’s there is because it says 2000 underneath and it’s way out of date. So I was writing for the Eastern News and Mail. The editor paid my fees to join the NUJ, the freelance branch, because I’d already had the book out, so I’m already a writer. So yeah, I ended up in the NUJ, but I never renewed it because I didn’t have the money.”
I found it quite charming he still kept hold of the card. Our coffee had gone cold by now.
“If I meet someone who thinks they’re the reincarnation of Galahad, I meet someone who thinks they’re the reincarnation of Lancelot. I meet lots of people who think they’re reincarnations or think they’re knights. They become my knights. I knight them with my sword, truth, honour, and justice. I mean a dream is but a dream. But a thousand people with the same dreams, it becomes a reality. And by that way, I have thought myself into existence. King Arthur now exists. You’re looking at him, you’re sitting opposite him at the table. But he only exists because he started in his own head.”
