News at Eleven: Britain's awkward relationship with

the continent is just one parallel with the present. [Simon] Armitage says, "I didn't realise, until I started translating it, that so many parallels come across. There is one scene where the British kill the king of Libya, who had been on a really murderous spree. And there is the whole business of England's very complicated relationship with the rest of the British Isles, which is something that has come up again recently. Also, there is the religious conflict, which seems to lurk at the back of this poem, with an early form of Protestantism being pursued against Rome."

from Spectator: Simon Armitage interview: Ancient enmities
then The Telegraph: The Death of King Arthur by Simon Armitage: review

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