This is an edition and translation of the first extant vernacular 'history' of Britain, by the Norman-French cleric Wace. His verse chronicle was in turn a translation, from the Latin prose of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (c.1138). It traces British history, part factual, part fictional, stretching from Brutus, the eponymous founder of the nation, up to the seventh century, when Anglo-Saxon invaders took control of the island. Some well-known stories appear here for the first time, such as that of King Lear and the earliest full-blown 'biography' of King Arthur. The Normans were keen to discover, and where they could not discover, invent, the history of the land they had conquered. Geoffrey's work filled that need, and Wace continued the process by making such history still more accessible and memorable, putting it into French verse and presenting it to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the cultivated wife of his king, in 1155. This volume provides the French text en face, revised from Ivor Arnold's 1938 edition and restoring many readings from his base manuscripts. It includes a full Introduction by the translator.