To the Chapel Perilous

by Naomi Mitchison

Had journalists plied their trade in the days of King Arthur, how would they have reported breaking stories like the Quest for the Holy Grail? Or the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere? Or the fall of the Round Table? In answering these intriguing questions, Naomi Mitchison offers keen and humorous insights into not only how the news is reported, but also how conflicting accounts of the Arthurian story may have grown. The resulting novel, To the Chapel Perilous, is a remarkable work of wit and style.

Genres: Fantasy, Arthurian, Fiction, British Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland and traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

Mitchison lived in Kintyre for many years and was an active small farmer. She served on Argyll County Council and was a member of the Highlands and Islands Advisory Panel from 1947 to 1965, and the Highlands and Islands Advisory Consultative Council from 1966 to 1974.

Praise for Naomi Mitchison:

"No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison."
-- The Observer

"Mitchison breathes life into such perennial themes as courage, forgiveness, the search for meaning, and self-sacrifice."
-- Publishers Weekly

"She writes enviably, with the kind of casual precision which ... comes by grace."
-- Times Literary Supplement

"One of the great subversive thinkers and peaceable transgressors of the twentieth century.... We are just catching up to this wise, complex, lucid mind that has for ninety-seven years been a generation or two ahead of her time."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Gifts

"Her descriptions of ritual and magic are superb; no less lovely are her accounts of simple, natural things -- water-crowfoot flowers, marigolds, and bright-spotted fish. To read her is like looking down into deep warm water, through which the smallest pebble and the most radiant weed shine and are seen most clearly; for her writing is very intimate, almost as a diary, or an autobiography is intimate, and yet it is free from all pose, all straining after effect; she is telling a story so that all may understand, yet it has the still profundity of a nursery rhyme.
-- Hugh Gordon Proteus, New Statesman and Nation

Reviews

[Arthurianmaiden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is without a doubt one of the most original arthurian book I have ever read. The story follows Lienors and Dylan, two journalists, in the last period of King Arthur's kingdom, an anachronistic one where there are new papers and photographs and media. Lienors works for the Camelot Chronicle (along with Merlin and Nimue and a character named Ygraine who is not Ygraine mother of Arthur) and follows what happens in Camelot very closely, always on Arthur's side and trying to make the newly rised power of the Church happy, while Dylan works for the Northern Pict, under the orders of Lord Horny who is very fond of news and manipulatic the journal to give more space to Orkneys and Lothian, instead, to the queen Morgan-Morgause (yes, it's an only character) and her sons, especially Gawain, loved by everyone, and the last one Mordred.
The story starts with Lienors and Dylan following what happens with the Grail quest to write a piece about it.

I truly liked how the book managed to write about the Grail quest. It is a difficult part, in my opinion, to write in modern novels but here they managed to use the most marvelous (as in full of marvels) pictures and descriptions of the Grail (from ghosts to angels, from never ending food to healing) in a very modern context. Basically: there is more than one grail. Every knight finds their own grail and reading the book we manage to see the different grails of Gawain, Bors, Galahad and Lancelot. But the problem is that the newpaper wants a story where there is only one grail so the decision is to make Galahad's grail the real one.
It is all quite strange at the beginning but at the same time there is also an alone of disaster, when the narrator slowly shows that the grail story is not enough, that not everyone is happy about it and that there is the need for a new scandal, namely: Lancelot and Guinevere.
The novel follows Camelot right at the end, with Camlann and Guinevere's days in the convent, with the eyes of two reporters.
There are of course some things I didn't like but nothing too tragic: I wasn't overly fond of Lienors disappearing during the book, when she was kidnapped, because she has been the main narrator until that moment, I also found the beginning of the book a bit too much confusing as well as some parts in it and I would have maybe preferred something more of an investigation about the nature of the grails (but this is my problem).
There were also many things I loved: Guinevere, first of all. She is one of the main characters and the author writes some wonderful things about her, about how she feels for her own life and responsabilities and her being trapped in a life that is not right for her because she would deserve better, I liked the humor of Ygraine and Merlin, the general humorous tone at the beginning of the book and the two characters of Dylan and Lienors. I assure you that you will love them and you will want them to be forever happy and in love.
To conclude: this is a very nice book, quite a unique one, original, amusing and very catchy!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

The conceit of journalists in Arthurian times seems so modern—I loved it. The book has such great things to say about the nature of truth, who tells the stories, and how they get told. The wry humor was right up my alley. I absolutely do not know enough Arthurania to understand everything that was going on, but that is the same feeling I’ve had since I was a young teen reading Hexwood, so even that was pleasantly nostalgic.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the Chapel Perilous is my eighth Naomi Mitchison this year. It’s actually the book that convinced me to buy at read a bunch of her books, but was a little harder to obtain than some others, so took me a while to get. What really appealed to me, was that it’s a take on the Arthurian stories that I haven’t heard before.

There are two central conceits to the book: What if there were newspaper journalists around to record the stories of the Round Table? And, what if every knight who has won a grail in the centuries of tradition actually did?

These two what-ifs come together really well. Leanors is a broadsheet journalist under the editorship of Merlin and Dalyn is a tabloid journalist under the editorship of Lord Horny (aka, The Devil). Both newspapers are utterly against the notion of many grails, a multitude of grails would weaken the whole idea of a grail quest and a grail knight. It’s only special if there’s one. So, both newspapers declare Galahad’s quest and grail the ‘true’ one, mainly because his is the simplest story. However, this doesn’t stop there being a whole bunch of other grails and the two reporters go to the different headquarters of the various knights to report.

As much as I’ve enjoyed the Mitchison books I’ve read, I haven’t found her as funny as I was expecting, this book is funny. There’s fun to be had with Merlin and the Devil as newspaper editors. There’s a lovely running gag about the ‘subs’, who are sub-editors, but also implied to be monstrous troglodyte-esque sub-humans. There are the mythological animals who serve as photographers in this world, including the Chad. The Chad confused me at first, not being a mythological creature I had heard of, but he’s the Chad of the old ‘Wot no…’ cartoons (known as Kilroy in the US).

There were also numerous references and gags to Arthurian legend. They mention that Taliesin is too high-brow to include the blue collar grail quest stuff. Sir Dinadan is referenced as a humour columnist. The different knights at grails are wonderfully characterised, whether it’s the pre-christian wildness of Peredur/Percival’s grail in the Forêt Sauvage, or the messianic version found at Joyous Garde. It became a little more serious when the whole Lancelot/Guinevere thing came out and the characters were catapulted to the end of Arthur’s reign - though there were still some fun bits about how Modred had buffed up.

A quote in the book says, “if you can keep it light, you can say a lot more”, and I wish Mitchison had followed that rule a bit more in her other books. To The Chapel Perilous manages to be both light and dense, like a satisfying cake. I’m not sure what someone unaware of various grail stories and general Arthurian Lore would get out of this book, it has the potential to be quite confusing but as someone who likes that stuff, this is a fun time. What’s more, it actually has points to make about the validity of lots of small truths rather than a single authorised Truth - and that’s a message that appeals to me.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual retelling of the story of King Arthur. I'm am not well read in this genre, so I was often confused by the plethora of characters. This is complicated by the fact that the role of these characters can change from version to version. Still, the central gimmick of having the story of the grail told from the perspective of two competing newspapers of the time is both funny and intelligent. The book can be quite terse because the author assumes that you are already familiar with the story and characters.

[Ry Herman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange and sometimes opaque story about two newspaper correspondents reporting on the fall of Camelot. It's often very funny, and often very sad. The story uses the grail quest, in all its myriad forms, as a launchpad for an examination of truth, history, and the search for meaning. If you're familiar with Arthurian legends before reading this, it will help you fill in a lot of what isn't being said.

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A witty take on the Arthurian legend, particularly the Holy Grail, from the viewpoint of two young journalists, "the Camelot Chronicle girl and the man from the Northern Pict". But "A Connecticut Yankee" it certainly isn't. Funny and profound, with a new look at many favourite Arthurian characters. Suppose there were more than one Grail? Would the truth have to be suppressed?

[Joanna Calder · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an odd book, but an interesting take on the Arthurian legend. The events are seen through the eyes of two journalists from competing newspapers - one run by the Devil and the other run by Merlin.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a fun and unique way of looking at the Arthurian legends.