My first thought on seeing this week's prompt of the Round Table at the 1945 Potsdam Conference was of...
... King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. According to Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur Arthur was given the table by King Leodegrance on Arthur's wedding to his daughter Guinevere. Leodegrance had been keeping the table for Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father.
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| King Arthur's Knights gathered at the Round Table to celebrate Pentecost see a vision of the Holy Grail |
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(15th century manuscript of Lancelot and the Holy Grail)
The Round Table has become a symbol for
equality and just government.
Geoffrey of Monmouth (1135) made no mention of a Round Table in his history of
Arthur. A French monk Robert Wace, writing around 1155, was the
first to mention it. There are a number of supposed Round Tables sites in Britain including Caerleon, Penrith, Stirling and Winchester.
According to Wace Arthur's knights sat at a round table while Arthur sat on a dais,
above the Round Table. The idea here was that the knights were all equal but
Arthur was still the king. Wace didn't how many knights sat around the
table.
A few years later, an Englishman named Layamon in his chronicle places
Arthur's court in London.
The Round Table is portrayed the result of a chance meeting between Arthur and
a Cornish carpenter, who offers to make for the king a table that could seat
1,600 men and be folded up and taken anywhere.
Robert de Boron tells us Merlin ordered Uther Pendragon to construct the
table based on his vision of the Last Supper Table and Joseph of Arimathea's
Grail Table. Merlin instructed Uther to have the table accommodate 50 chairs.
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| Painted table in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle representing the Round Table of King Arthur |
( By Martin Croft CC BY-SA 3.0)
The
large wooden table in the Great Hall at Winchester
dates from no earlier than the thirteenth century, when it may have been made
at the command of King Edward III, who was considering a revival of the Round
Table as an order of chivalry. In the end, he dropped the idea and created the
Order of Garter instead. The oak table is 18 feet
across and nearly 3 inches thick. It weighs nearly 1.25 tons.
If you prefer to be in the open air then this is where you should go.
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| King Arthur's Round Table - a neolithic henge - Eamont Bridge, Cumbria (By David Berry) |
90m in diameter. only one of the original entrances survives. The external bank is 1.5m wide, the internal quarry ditch 9m; two standing stones outside the northern entrance are no longer visible.
Of course it is not only a legendary king that had a round table, nature has its own.
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| Mermaid Tables - Ravenscar Beach, Yorkshire | |
(By Andrew Curtis - 21 Feb 2004 - CC BY-SA 2.0)
These strange round formations on the rock shore are apparently formed and preserved from erosion by the capping of resistant rocks.
It has been a long time since Arthur's time at the end of the 6th century but today's politicians use the round table format at those 'perennial' G8 Summits.
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| G8 working session - May 2012 |
(Official White House photo - Pete Souza)
Certainly they are are a a lot more informal than that Potsdam lot who take your attention away from the 'star' of the show.
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| Round Table - Potsdam Conference, Cecilienhof Palace |
(Presidental Libraries - Harry S Truman)
I hope Alan has reached this point because I'm sure that he will appreciate a night or two at a table like this -
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| Round Table, Covent Garden |
(Ewan Munroe - 2008 - CC BY-SA 2.0)
I'm told this is at 20-27 St Martin's Court near Leicester Square tube station. However to see where others have been you should weave your way across to Sepia-Saturday-168.
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