Battle of Camlann Battle of Camlann The Battle of Camlann ( or "Brwydr Camlan") is reputed to have been the final battle of King Arthur, in which he either died or was fatally wounded, fighting either with or against Mordred, who is also said to have died. The name may derive from a Brittonic "*Cambo-landa" ("crooked/twisting-enclosure" or "crooked/twisting open land"), or (less likely) "*Cambo-glanna" ("crooked/twisting bank (of a river)"), as found in the name of the Roman fort of Camboglanna in Cumbria. The earliest known reference to the battle of Camlann is an entry in the 10th-century "Annales Cambriae", recording the battle in
King Arthur to Pre-Raphaelite imitators, and it could not avoid being affected by World War I, which damaged the reputation of chivalry and thus interest in its medieval manifestations and Arthur as chivalric role model. The romance tradition did, however, remain sufficiently powerful to persuade Thomas Hardy, Laurence Binyon and John Masefield to compose Arthurian plays, and T. S. Eliot alludes to the Arthur myth (but not Arthur) in his poem "The Waste Land", which mentions the Fisher King. In the latter half of the 20th century, the influence of the romance tradition of Arthur continued, through novels such as T. H.