Middle Ages - Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1100 -1155) was a Welsh cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae ("History of the Kings of Britain"), which was widely popular in its day and was credited, uncritically, well into the 16th century, being translated into various other languages from its original Latin, but which is now considered unreliable history. Geoffrey's structuring and reshaping of the Merlin and Arthur myths engendered the vast popularity of Merlin and Arthur myths in later literature, a popularity that lasts to this day; he is generally viewed by scholars as the major establisher of the Arthurian canon. In the 2009 BBC series Merlin the character of Geoffrey of Monmouth was played by Michael Cronin.