Geoffrey Ashe

Geoffrey Thomas Leslie Ashe (29 March 1923 – 30 January 2022) was a British cultural historian and lecturer, known for his focus on King Arthur.

Early life Born in London, Ashe was an only child who excelled all his classmates in academics. Periods of poor health meant that he had ample opportunity to read broadly, or be read to. Through his parents, he developed a life-long enjoyment of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas and Conan Doyles' Sherlock Holmes canon. His mother read some of Conan Doyle's stories to him from the Strand when they were first published; his father took him to see Gilbert & Sullivan performances by some of the cast who had worked with Gilbert himself.

Ashe's father was general manager of Poly Tours, later Lunn-Poly, and travelled to Europe and the British Isles frequently with his parents to the hotels used by the agency, sometimes to correct problems, sometimes to establish business contacts. His favourite childhood memories were of summers spent in the West Highlands of Scotland, at the Highland Hotel in Fort William.

When he was 16, his parents emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia. He graduated from the University of British Columbia before continuing at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Work Many of his historical books are centred on factual analysis of the Arthurian legend, and the archaeological past of King Arthur, beginning with his King Arthur's Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury, in 1957. The book was inspired by what Ashe had read in G. K. Chesterton's Short History of England. In 2015, Ashe was unanimously named an Honorary Freeman of Glastonbury by the Glastonbury Town Council "in recognition of his eminent services to the place as an author and cultural historian." He commented that his honour was most important to him because it symbolised the respect of his own community. Of deep professional and personal gratification to him was the title Eminent Arthurian, bestowed by The International Arthurian Society in the year of his 90th birthday, 2013.

Personal life He died in Glastonbury on 30 January 2022, at the age of 98.

Publications King Arthur's Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury (1957) From Caesar to Arthur (1960) Land to the West: St Brendan's Voyage to America (1962) The Land and the Book: Israel – The Perennial Nation (1965) The Quest For Arthur's Britain (1968) Gandhi: A Study in Revolution (1968) All About King Arthur (1969) Camelot and the Vision of Albion (1971) King Arthur in Fact and Legend (1971) The Art of Writing Made Simple (1972) The Finger and the Moon (1973) Do What You Will: A History of Anti-Morality (1974) revised as: The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality (2000) The Virgin (1976) The Ancient Wisdom (1977) Miracles (1978) Gandhi: A Biography (1980) A Guidebook to Arthurian Britain (1980) The Glastonbury Tor Maze (1982) Kings and Queens of Early Britain (1982) Avalonian Quest (1982) The Discovery of King Arthur (1985) The Landscape of King Arthur (1987) The Arthurian Handbook (1988) (with Norris J. Lacy) King Arthur: The Dream of a Golden Age (1990) Mythology of the British Isles (1990) Dawn Behind the Dawn: A Search for the Earthly Paradise (1991) Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom (1992) Discovering the Goddess: A Personal Testimony (1994) The Book of Prophecy: From Ancient Greece to the Millennium (1999) Encyclopedia of Prophecy (2001) Merlin (2001) Labyrinths and Mazes (2003) The Offbeat Radicals: The British Tradition of Alternative Dissent (2007) Eden in the Altai: The Prehistoric Golden Age and the Mythic Origins of Humanity (2018)