Volume 32, Number 8 · May 9, 1985
Robin Who?
By Maurice Keen
Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry
by John Bellamy
Indiana University Press, 150 pp., $19.50
Robin Hood, so the old story goes, lived in Sherwood Forest as an outlaw, in company with seven score of 'merry men' clad in Lincoln green, poached the king's deer, plundered the rich, and successfully defied all the efforts of the Sheriff of Nottingham to lay him by the heels. To ask what historical truth lies behind this famous tale is a natural question, and Professor John Bellamy, a distinguished medieval historian, attempts in this book to answer it. On the basis of diligent, minutely detailed, and of necessity often laborious searches in the records of the fourteenth century, he proposes a series of identifications of figures prominent in the earliest version of the legend. The subject of the identity of Robin Hood and his fellows is one that has long been controversial, and his conclusions are certain to invigorate the controversy.
Review, 2829 words
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