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These Five books get as close to the truth as it is feasable to go with the ancient texts that are available.
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Most people do not realise that there are four major sets of Chronicles that have been preserved down the years. Most British people were taught the history of Britain based upon the Anglo Saxon Chronicles with a bit of Roman thrown in, but there are other versions of British History Some written many years Before the Anglo Saxon Chronicles. There was Nennius, who Translated ancient Welsh documents into Latin in the 9th century and also added his knowledge of history as he knew it, Nennius was a British Monk trained by the British Christian Church that had been established since Roman times.
St Bede was a Roman Catholic monk who under instruction from the Church wrote The History of Britain in the 8th Century AD. St Gildas was one of the first British monks trained by the Catholic Church, he had been sent to spread Christianity to the pagans of northeast England.
He wrote his version of British History in the 6th Century AD , although he had no ancient documents to research from he was confident enough to start. It is soon obvious that he was struggling with the detail of earlier history but he gave some very good insight to what had been going on in his own time.
And then there is Geoffrey of Monmouth another monk who wrote The History of the Kings of Britain, this was again Translated from more ancient British documents that Geoffrey had been asked to translate by a high ranking British Bishop in the 11th century AD.
The Anglo Saxon Chronicles were started by King Alfred the Great but were actually written and compiled by many different people, written by Anglo Saxons rather than Britains it tells the story of Anglo Saxons in Britain and their conquests. The only set of Chronicles not to mention King Arthur are the Anglo Saxon Chronicles ( typical ) although it was Geofrey of Monmouth who elevated Arthur to mythical status, when he discovered that the name of Arthur kept appearing in the old welsh texts that he was translating.
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