The quest for the Holy Grail is one of the most important elements in the story of King Arthur. Yet even among the many interested in the stories of the Round Table, very few have read at first hand the medieval masterpieces which, over a period of some forty years in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, constructed what might be called the legend of the Grail: not least because of the massive and unwieldy nature of this material, full of bewildering contradictions and composed by a number of different writers in many different languages. This volume interweaves the principal motifs and narrative strands of all the original Grail romances and constructs a single, consistent and accessible version of the Grail story, tracing with clear precision the development of its mysterious and potent theme. NIGEL BRYANT is head of drama at Marlborough College. His previous Arthurian books include The High Book of the Grail: Perlesvaus, Perceval: The Story of the Grail and Merlin and the Grail.