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I ask you.
Some of us spend years of unpaid work patiently working out the circumstances in which early British and related literature arose, studying texts word by word, excluding hypotheses we would have liked to entertain, sticking rigorously to what can be shown to be the case. The result? Our work gets maybe ten hits a year. Then some unspeakable moron comes along and claims that, because the "city of Legions" and a shrine to martyrs are mentioned in the same text (which, he fails to say, is book-length) - this proves that an amphitheatre in Chester is King Arthur's Round Table! And this, in the name of God and before all the hosts of Hell, passes for scholarship! It is published in newspapers and magazines! And the conscious fraudster - because this cannot but be conscious - revels in the publicity and perhaps gets a permanent spot in the media or a university chair!
NEWSPAPERS, WEEKLIES AND TV NEWS PROGRAMMES SHOULD BE FORBIDDEN BY LAW FROM COMMENTING ON ARCHAEOLOGY, AND ESPECIALLY ON ARTHURIAN MATTERS.
I ask you.
Some of us spend years of unpaid work patiently working out the circumstances in which early British and related literature arose, studying texts word by word, excluding hypotheses we would have liked to entertain, sticking rigorously to what can be shown to be the case. The result? Our work gets maybe ten hits a year. Then some unspeakable moron comes along and claims that, because the "city of Legions" and a shrine to martyrs are mentioned in the same text (which, he fails to say, is book-length) - this proves that an amphitheatre in Chester is King Arthur's Round Table! And this, in the name of God and before all the hosts of Hell, passes for scholarship! It is published in newspapers and magazines! And the conscious fraudster - because this cannot but be conscious - revels in the publicity and perhaps gets a permanent spot in the media or a university chair!
NEWSPAPERS, WEEKLIES AND TV NEWS PROGRAMMES SHOULD BE FORBIDDEN BY LAW FROM COMMENTING ON ARCHAEOLOGY, AND ESPECIALLY ON ARTHURIAN MATTERS.
