'Albion's Giants: Gogmagog, Brutus and the Conquest of Britain', with Dr Alixe Bovey

London Fortean Society presents: 'The Haunted Landscape' (filmed at Conway Hall on 20 November 2021).

Dr Alixe Bovey – Albion’s Giants: Gogmagog, Brutus and the Conquest of Britain

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, completed in the 1130s, opens c. 1200 BC with the tale of the conquest of Britain by a band of Trojan refugees. Led by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, the Trojans made their way to an uninhabited island known as Albion, but on arrival they discovered that it’s overrun by ferocious giants. Renaming the island Britain after Brutus, they exterminated the giants, and then founded London as the new Troy. Although Geoffrey’s story kills off the giants in just a few lines, they have persisted in the myth and material culture of Britain. This talk explores the remarkable variety of giants in the visual arts – in manuscripts and books, carved into landscapes and as pageant figures – asking how and why they have survived so long and what they reveal about the monstrous origins of the British nation.

Dr Alixe Bovey is a specialist in medieval art history based at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she is Head of Research.

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