arthur_of_the_britons | Entries tagged with photo

These posters were for a spanish version of "Arthur of the Britons", shown in Mexico as "El Rey de los Guerreros."

Arthur Poster merged

Though Michael Gothard's photo appears in the insert below, only Oliver Tobias and Jack Watson are mentioned by name.

Kai poster

The photo inserts were taken from actual footage, but the background picture bears little resemblance to anything the viewers would have seen on the screen.

Text:
El Rey de los Guerreros
Ano 500 D.C las hordas salvajes invaden inglaterra, pero un joven guerrero las ataca ferozmente.

Translation:
The King of the warriors
In the year 500 AD, the wild hordes invade England, but a young warrior attacks them ferociously.

'Grinding his teeth and axe is the brutish Mark of Cornwall (Brian Blessed) who appears in ARTHUR OF THE BRITONS (HTV, 6.30-other regions 4.50). There is a lot of ironmongery in "Arthur," but in this excellent series there are no scenes which would upset the children.'

This photo and short paragraph was to publicise the episode, "The Duel", in which Mark of Cornwall spends most of his time bullying Llud, a battlefield is left strewn with corpses, and Llud and Mark have a big fight. Clearly children were expected to be made of sterner stuff in 1973.

Daily Mirror 10 Jan 1973

This puzzle feature may have been from a magazine such as "Look-in" - date unknown.

The photo was taken at Black Rock Quarry.

AotB, Bristol Evening Post, 13 Dec 1972.pdf

Photo featuring Oliver Tobias with the Peregrine falcon that appeared in "The Treaty."

This double-page pull-out poster appears in the TV Times on 9 December. The text reads as follows:

Women all over Britain are keeping a weekly date with him – even if they do offer their children as a reason. Oliver Tobias, star of the new 24-week adventure series, Arthur of the Britons, has the sort of dark good looks with which housewives like to decorate the inside of the kitchen cupboard doors.

He is a 25-year-old six-footer with a big, healthy smile who likes to do his own stunts. He rides and sword-fights with skill and conviction, but doesn’t always escape unscathed. During a film battle sequence, Tobias let a spear through his guard and ended up with ten stitches in his head.

Despite his Swiss origins, he finds the Arthur legend more compelling than the tale of William Tell. He believes that Arthur actually existed. “I think he was a Romano-British soldier who defended the Celts against the Saxons,” says Tobias. He sees Arthur as a complex and rather sad character, a young man forced to take responsibilities far beyond his years.

Riding is Tobias’s great hobby and at the moment he is having built a quadrega – a Roman chariot to be pulled by four horses harnessed in line abreast.

Oliver Tobias was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 6, 1947. He is a Leo – ideal for anyone playing Arthur, since his qualities include determination, ambition and the ability to lead. His mother is German and his father Swiss, and he came to England when he was 10. He went to an acting school in London. In the theatre, he played joint lead in the London production of Hair, singing Donna and the title song, and then staged and choreographed the show in Israel. He has made two films: Romance of a Horsethief, shot in Yugoslavia in 1970, and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore in 1971. The series in which he plays Arthur is his first big opportunity on television.

TV Times 15 Dec

The first page of this feature in the children's magazine "Look-in" from the week ending 2 December 1972 sets the stage for the re-telling of the Legend of King Arthur in a much more realistic way than it had ever been told before.

The captions are not entirely accurate. Kai is wholly Saxon by birth, but Celtic by upbringing and loyalties. In the scene shown top left, from "The Challenge", Kai is not trying to overthrow Arthur. The two of them have just had a squabble that got out of hand.

The scene shown top right is interesting, in that the photo from "The Gift of Life" is taken from a different angle to the film used in the episode. Also, Arthur appears to be running with the child, whereas in the episode, he picks it up, the film is cut, and we see a rider approach, then it cuts back to Arthur giving the child to its mother as Kai runs past. Any film of Kai dismounting, and them running with the child, was left out of the final edit.

AotB Look in 2 small

The top picture in the article below shows Kai and Llud launching spears at the Saxons in "Arthur is Dead." The picture below is captioned 'Goda, played by Hilary Dwyer' but actually shows Eithna, played by Madeleine Hinde.

Look-in 1972b

Text:

As the story opens, we see the Celtic chiefs struggling, one by one, to move a great boulder. Beneath it lies a sword, and great honour awaits the first man to lift that sword above his head. But all the chiefs fail – and then the young warrior called Arthur steps forward. He shows them how to move the boulder by pushing together – but as the surprised men recover from their effort, they realize that Arthur has snatched up the sword and now holds it aloft.

Arthur has established his right to become war-leader of the Celts. At the same time, he has taught his men two important lessons. First, that unity is strength. And second, that victory goes to the man who thinks and plans rather than to the strongest.

Dream of a united Britain

But although Arthur becomes leader of Celtic resistance to the Saxon invaders of Britain, he needs all his wisdom and bravery to keep his place. His men are only too ready to fight among themselves. And of his two lieutenants, only the veteran warrior Llud is completely reliable. The other, Kai, is part-Saxon, a violent and head-strong young man who sometimes sees Arthur’s careful planning as a sign of weakness. But with these men, Arthur strives to bring about his dream of a united Britain.

“Arthur of the Britons” is based on what historians, rather than imaginative writers, can tell us about Arthur. In fact, we know very little. But what we do know is that a man called Arthur once existed, and that his deeds were so great that he was to be remembered for centuries as a mighty leader. From about A.D. 1200 onward, when the stories of Arthur were first written down, the legends of ‘King Arthur’ took on the more colourful form in which we read them today.

It is these legends, no more true than fairy-tales, that HTV’s “Arthur of the Britons” strips away – to show us the real man who lies behind him.

Arthur
Warlord of the Britons

words by Peter Escourt
pictures by Stuart Sadd

The figure of King Arthur strides across the pages of British history like a giant, but it is the romantic figure of the Age of Chivalry, the figure that has inspired the songs of medieval troubadours and modern poets alike. In HTV’s new 24-part series, Arthur of the Britons, which begins this week, Arthur is brought from the world of legend to the world of reality and pictured, below, as he really was – a desperate sixth-century warlord struggling to hold off the English invaders leading small forays into their territory from a grubby little stronghold that became known, in later times, as the romantic Camelot.

Finding an actual location for Camelot was to the Middle Ages what Unidentified Flying Objects have been to this century. The riddle was romantic and happily unanswerable. Was it Winchester, Caerleon, Carlisle – or where? It was the one thing which, as a modern scholar has remarked, held them spellbound for three centuries.

But, since this summer, there have been no such doubts at HTV in Bristol: Camelot is about six miles from Stroud, Gloucestershire, a half-mile off the main road to Bath. They should know: their set-designers built it there for Arthur of the Britons.

It is small and rather grimy. A collection of small wooden huts, thatched with straw, insulated with mud, straggles along the lake shore. There are a few skins left out to dry, and a skin coracle pulled up out of the water.

Certainly it isn't what scholars of the Middle Ages, or Alfred, Lord Tennyson, or any Hollywood mogul would recognise as Camelot. Ironically, Arthur himself might recognise it.

The series brings to television the most mysterious figure in our history, not as legend or romance would have him, but as he really must have been. It is the first time the historical Arthur has been presented dramatically on film.

It will be a great shock to viewers who see him as a great and cultivated king of the Middle Ages, all-wise and quite legendary. This was the Arthur of romance and legend: a golden figure whose empire of great palaces and towns stretched to Rome and beyond.

But the archaeological research of the 20th century suggests that there must have been someone there, a real man where the legends all begin. Drawing on this, the series seeks to show him as he was: a desperate guerrilla fighter trying to unite the rag-tag armies of Britain in the collapse which followed the Roman evacuation.

Arthur is doing this to fight off the barbarian invasions - which will prove a further shock to national susceptibilities: these barbarians are the English, coming from their ancestral lands in Germany, and the men in the white hats in Britain in the early sixth century were the Welsh. Arthur was a Welshman.

But he was not a king. Modern historical theories portray him as a professional soldier who, by strength of personality, held together a mounted force drawn from the petty kings of Britain. This force managed to inflict a series of defeats on the Saxons, who fought on foot. It eventually broke up when internal discord led to the civil war in which Arthur was killed.

No Guineveres,
Lancelots, Galahads
or Merlins. No
armour, no romance.
Just grime.

The gradual emergence of an historical Arthur, pieced together by scholars from recent excavations, old Welsh poetry, traditions and Dark Age chronicles, is one of the most romantic achievements of recent historical research. But it has meant that Arthur's world has shrunk from a great European stage, with thousands locked in
battle and besieging huge castles, to the forests of Dark Age Britain, where armies of a few hundred waged desperate little battles into which chivalry never came.

The historical Arthur is ideal for a television production. There are no elaborate sets to be built, no army to be hired, no plate armour to be assembled. There is just wood and straw and skins, everything small and grubby - but in the sixth century, anything can happen.

HTV are proud of their historical research. Their first big attempt to struggle out of the anonymity which can afflict regional TV companies was Pretenders, an historical series networked earlier this year. It was an account of the Monmouth rebellion in 1685 and the cameras went where the events actually took place. The Battle of Sedgemoor was filmed on Sedgemoor in Somerset and wandering bands of players got up to their mummeries in old West Country inns. The series was a success, and has been sold abroad.

With Arthur of the Britons the company feels it is on to another winner. The same production team is involved. Networking is guaranteed and an American distributor has been acquired. At HTV they enthusiastically talk about the few names that have come down to us from the murk of the sixth century as though they were in yesterday's newspapers.

The set-designers have been doing their homework. In his office, Douglas James, art director for the series, is surrounded by drawings of log-huts and of the wooden tools that have come down through lrish history and would have been used in Celtic Britain. There are sketches of breast-ploughs, wooden spades, and a ponderous wooden-wheeled cart.

"We knew filming would last six months so we had to build something which would last that time. We had to use the building materials they would have used: larch poles, roofed with turf, thatch and bracken. The building rook 16 men about l0 days. In addition to the small huts, we have a long-hut which is sound-proofed to act as a studio.

"We built it by a lake with a stockade and a jetty, so it is defensible. We had to clear the bracken and the conifers around the lake. Conifers aren't indigenous to Britain, and there would have been none here in Arthur's time. Inside the huts we put things like wooden platters and bronze grease lamps."

The TV Camelot was built in a steeply-wooded valley near Stroud owned by the Forestry Commission, where no pylon or concrete wall can drag the viewer back sharply into the 20th century. For a moment, disregarding the odd glass-fibre boulder and a rival encampment of canteens and car parks 200 yards up the track, this really could be the Dark Ages.

But enough wiring for a pop festival or a small country town trails out of the long-hut. Inside are lights, clapper-boards and cameramen, and the inevitable young man in tight trousers calling like a wild prophet for silence. Beyond all this, stark in lighting that would have terrified the Dark Ages, are skins, straw - and Arthur.

Arthur is played by Oliver Tobias, 24. Suitably rugged and unsmiling, he is about to begin the great task of uniting the kingdoms under one military command. Tobias is a former leading man of Hair.

His Arthur is a complex figure. Between takes he sits on the steps of the long-hut playing with his broad sword.

"Arthur would have had to be rugged. He would have had to be prepared to back up with fact everything he said. It was a small world. If you travelled three miles you were in danger: it would have been like travelling 3,000 miles today," said Tobias.

He points towards the top of the track leading away from the huts. “Look up there. In his day, at any time, a horde might be coming over to rape and kill. I think he would have been a sad man. He would have been slightly higher than everybody else, a thinker, but he would always have been having to reach for his dagger."

Arthur is unmarried in the series. There are no Guineveres, Lancelots or Galahads. Instead, Arthur operates in a kind of Three Musketeers act, with a grizzled veteran called Lud the Silver-Handed, a pagan, and a Saxon foundling called Kai.

Sadly, HTV jettisoned some of their more interesting ideas. At first it was suggested that scenes be filmed in places with traditional links with Arthur, like Cadbury un Devon and Glastonbury, Somerset, where tradition has it he was buried. Peter Miller, the producer, explained: “These places are now just relics. We decided to film Arthur as a young man in his encampment and in woods.”

It was also intended to bring in Merlin as an historical figure, a man who had travelled the known world, had studied medicine under the Arabs, mathematics under the Moors, all of which would have made him a god-like person in Dark Age Britain. But he was thrown out with the rest of the Round Table.

He would have been a hangover from the knights in shining armour and HTV wanted to sever the last link with the legends.

But the earlier episodes do succeed in giving a picture of sixth-century Britain. In one episode all the rag-tag elements of petty royalties assemble. There is Ambrose, still aping Roman ways, dressed in the tatty remnants of Roman armour, Mark of Cornwall, a great bull of a man, played by Brian Blessed, and Hereward, a religious maniac calling for help to his old Celtic gods.

Such eccentric figures might well have emerged from the wilds once the Romans went. Ambrose is a fairly accurate figure: Celtic and barbarian warlords probably did attempt a form of Roman parade dress, as shown by some of the Sutton Hoo archaeological finds.

The form of the series, with self-contained episodes, makes it necessary that something happens every week, and so Arthur quarrels constantly with Kai, or the Saxons, or the odd Celtic king to heighten the drama in individual episodes.

Feminine interest is provided in one episode by giving him a Celtic wild-cat to tame, whom he has captured from her father, a hostile princeling. The girl, played by Madeleine Hinde, has to be persuaded to eat. Wild-eyed and furious, she spits chicken pieces all over Arthur. The shot is done and re-done. A chicken carcass off-stage is carved until it almost disappears. At last the director is satisfied.

"A lot of my friends,” said Oliver Tobias seriously, brushing bits of chicken off his jerkin, “believe that Arthur will come back some day.”

They, and the viewing public, are in for a surprise.

NEXT WEEK: our Star of the Month double-page pull-out portrait is Oliver Tobias as he appears in Arthur of the Britons.

These photos of Valerie Van Ost were taken while she was filming "Arthur of the Britons" episode, "People of the Plough", in which she played "Freya."

Frey Valerie Van Ost_0005.jpg

The back of this first black and white photo shows her home address, and that of her agent.

Frey Valerie Van Ost_0004.jpg

The next two prints were obtained from the slide film below.

Frey Valerie Van Ost from slides_0001.jpg

Frey Valerie Van Ost from slides_0002.jpg

These two Polaroids show Valerie as Freya, alone, and with Mark Edwards as her husband Rulf, with their homestead in the background.

Frey Valerie Van Ost_0007.jpg

The date on the back of both of these Polaroids, August 25, accords with the week in which the creators of this archive had determined that the episode was filmed.

Frey Valerie Van Ost_0010.jpg

This photo is courtesy of camera operator, Roger Pearce, who says:

This shot is from our Woodchester Park location: me, operating the camera on the left, as one or two scallywags hurriedly exit the Long House, lake in background.

Arthur 2b

The "scallywags" are Morcant's men, who attack Arthur's village, only to find it deserted.

These photos appear to have been taken in July 1972, while filming was still taking place at Woodchester - probably around the time of the filming of "The Challenge" and "Enemies and Lovers". They were taken by one of the trainee make-up assistants - name as yet unknown.

Sid, Oliver and Michael.jpg

Director, Sid Hayers, with Oliver Tobias (Arthur), and Michael Gothard (Kai).

Sid Hayers at swordpoint.jpg

Sid Hayers, at swordpoint, with Oliver Tobias (Arthur), Michael Gothard (Kai) and Fight Arranger, Peter Brayham (left).

Oliver Tobias says: That was the very likeable and easygoing Sidney Hayers! He directed 11 episodes of "Arthur of the Britons." Michael and I thought he was great. He had a very good sense of humour.

The posting of these photos on an HTV Facebook page resulted in the following exchanges between former “Arthur of the Britons” crew members:

Boom operator, Alan Jones: Peter Brayham had arrived from a shoot called “Man in a Suitcase”.

Electrician, Colin Holloway: I recognised his extra strong glasses anywhere.

Alan Jones: Within days, he was hit in the crotch by a spear being thrown towards the camera, and was ambulanced off the set.¹

Cinematographer, Peter Thornton: The spear was thrown by one of the extras, a neighbour of ours at the time, Ken Holmes, who represented England in the Commonwealth Games.² He competed in the javelin! … Peter Brayham instructed a group of extras to throw their spears and aim at him, thinking that they would not get anywhere near him. He was obviously unaware that amongst them was a trained javelin thrower who was extremely accurate in his aim.

Runner, Nick Bigsby: The man on the left of the picture is Peter Brayham who was the stunt coordinator and I was the runner on the series which gave me a fantastic grounding in TV production. [to Colin Holloway] I was the runner on Arthur and remember you on that blue wagon with the brute on top! I went on to Thames where I had a great 20 years vision mixing and then directing before going freelance.

Colin Holloway: … this bridge was washed away one weekend of high waters and storm winds. ³ Rebuilt again by George and Gordon, who were the main (great!) construction crew. I worked on most of the episodes as an electrician. Great memories of a very hard working crew. I also remember Alan Burnham, Tom etc.

Colin Holloway also supplied these memories:

Arthur was the first big film I worked on with HTV as a young spark. I had commercial shoots already under my belt in my previous job with The West of England Film Studios in Bristol shooting colour 35mm film. So I was already prepared for a full on drama series.

Our crew was Des Coles, Keith Webber, Dave Bailey, Roger Maclean, and myself: operating the Brutes and other lighting. A Brute is a very large light unit, on a big heavy tripod, that takes two men just to lift up the stand and then mount the lamp (as big as a dustbin) on the top. It is then operated by one spark perched on top of a tall pair of steps. These days the use of a cherry picker is required for safety. The mobile generator is parked some distance away, due to noise problems, but then we have to run big heavy cables to the lamps. This is a continuous labour of love. Everything has to be de-rigged and put away each night - and start all over again the next day!

On Camera team: Director of Photography, Graham Edgar. Camera operator, Roger Pearce, Peter Thornton and possibly young Howard, and Ray. And plenty of others to make up the complete crew, including the sound department.

There is always something to do. We start on location at 07:00 and wrap at 19:00, 5 days a week, and may include extra overtime to clear up. Then there is your travel time from base to base.

Food is supplied via a professional location caterers [George Cook] which is very good overall, with the highlight being the fresh sandwiches and cakes just before we all go home for the day, exhausted, with only a few hours before our early morning alarm call - and off we go!

This extended routine is tiring but there is great camaraderie, and with so many different jobs all working with one aim. There is barely any time for evening pub time. If the location was too far away we were transported by a unit bus or minivans. Not very often were we allowed an overnight stay. That was saved for the actors and bosses.

I did work on every episode, as some days crossed over with other episodes; so to catch up, a second unit was used to fill in the gaps, both Woodchester and Woollard, and anywhere else in between.

While we were filming there was nearly always horses on set - which brought its own problems! If an actor or extra was too close, we called out, “Tails up!” This kept the costumes as clean as possible - and our boots - but we still had to clean the cables that by now were 6 inches below the surface, awaiting the de-rig.

The constant fighting scenes had to be well managed and special FX guys and armourer were kept busy. The village had constant fires for cooking and other fire sources for keeping warm etc. Sometimes a whole village would be attacked and get sacked during village rivalry. All SFX. Even smoke machines were in constant use, and oil torches placed around the sets during night shoots - well, after dark anyway. Other FX might be traps and pits dug into the ground. The FX boys did all sorts of stunts.

The fights were sometimes involving a couple of dozen “extras” as they were called in those days. Now they are “supporting actors.” I know it’s hard, but - come lunchtime - they were kept back to let the crew get in first. Always a push and shove period!

As I said, there was great friendship between the departments - and sometimes a practical joke was played!
Following their lunch, the make-up ladies would retire to their car for a little refreshment and a snooze.

On one occasion, in high summer - and it was hot - the scene was set. The girls were in their car, sending up Zzzzzzz …

A couple of sparks procured a large heavy black drape, sneaked up to the car, and ever so gently slid the drape over the car, efficiently blacking out the daylight.

Zzzzz.

Then an almighty scream punctuated the scene! The girls panicked, not knowing the time of day as they woke up from slumber, and more screams followed - but soon abated.

I’m not sure if ever they forgave them, but they carried on their lives. And no one was injured or hurt - maybe their pride!

I am a very long-standing friend of both Daphne [Neville] and Roger Pearce; we go way back to the early mid-sixties. And I have gaffered for Sean [Dromgoole] on a little drama on the Dartmoor hills, so I know him, and his father, Patrick Dromgoole, who produced this series. I thoroughly loved working on these productions and those that followed, ie. “Search and Rescue”, “Darkness and Danger”, then following on to “Robin of Sherwood” etc.

I started a film lighting hire company, with a proper sound stage with full lighting grid and camera cranes, dollies, etc and it was used for drama and commercials. It came to an abrupt end when Covid came along and reared its ugly head. We had to shut, but we still continued lighting and grips crews freelance technicians. I am now retired.

~~

¹ Oliver Tobias does not remember this, but says “Peter Brayham … fell off his horse a few times!”

² Ken Holmes competed in the javelin at the 1970 Commonwealth Games – he actually represented Wales, and came 7th, with a throw of 68.62 metres.

³ This was not actually the bridge he was referring to – this was the landing stage at Woodchester. However, the very similar-looking bridge at Woollard was washed away by torrential rains, a week before the end of the series.

This photo of some of the HTV sound crew who worked on "Arthur of the Britons" was posted by Alan Jones on the Facebook page for HTV.

From the left: boom, Alan Jones; sound assistant, Barry Back; sound recordist, Mike Davey; boom, Martin Pearce.

Some of the crew of Arthur of the Britons

They were recording the scene where the Saxons drowned in a flooded field in "Arthur is Dead" - hence the thigh boots Alan is sporting! Alan recalls, "the summer was pretty warm and dry and some Saxons had to flounder around in six inches of water. But it still looked convincing!"