historia regum britanniae - Sources
Geoffrey claimed to have translated the Historia into Latin from "a very ancient book in the British tongue", given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, but few scholars take this claim seriously. ^{"Thorpeintro"} Much of the work appears to be derived from Gildas's 6th century polemic The Ruin of Britain , Bede's 8th century Ecclesiastical History of the English People , the 9th century History of the Britons ascribed to Nennius, the 10th century Welsh Annals , medieval Welsh and king-lists, the poems of Taliesin, the Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen , and some of the medieval Welsh Saint's Lives,{html}<ref name="Thorpeintro" />{html} expanded and turned into a continuous narrative by Geoffrey's own imagination.

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