George Leone

I was travelling on business reading a book about the historical figure behind the legend of King Arthur. As I lay there digesting a particularly interesting section of the book, I had a vivid image pop into my head that formed the basis of what, in time, became a screenplay, and sometime after that, at the urging of some friends, a novel-"Spirit of the King-The Legend of King Arthur".

The theory is pretty universally accepted that there was someone who at least gave rise to the idea of a "restitutor"- a redeemer of sorts that fought to shore up the disintegration of values and order. The prevailing theory is that he was a British or Romano-British Chieftain that lived in the days of the waning influence of the Roman Empire in Briton. I was fascinated by the idea of;

'If "The Death of Arthur" could be accepted in part as military history-what was the "real" Arthur like?'

And so I decided to use what knowledge of military history that I possessed to weave a tale of 'what really happened'. More than that, I used my knowledge of human nature to write that nugget of truth that exists between heaven and hell. Nothing is as noble or base as we hear at the beginning. It is always somewhere in between. My sincere hope is that the "real" Arthur makes its way into your library and on to the screen to serve as a cultural reminder that our "grail" is in the everyday around us and the "real" Arthur no further away than the closest mirror.