Winged man, the

The story of Bladud, the father of King Lear. A leper and a swineherd, a necromancer and a wise king, his memory lives on. His was a golden age of wisdom and magic, where otherworld beings mingled freely with the people of this world. Restless at the royal court, the young Prince Bladud sets off to consult an oracle in the west country - a wild wooded place near a mysterious hot spring that gushes from a cave. There the priestess tells him that he will be a great king, and that one day he will fly like an eagle. When he returns to his father's hill-fort at Trinovantum, Bladud's head is full of magnificent dreams... until trickery entraps him in a loveless marriage. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge, sharpened by a mysterious experience at the burial mound of his forefathers, takes him away from his home and wife on a dangerous journey to faraway Greece. There he meets and falls in love with a woman who has appeared to him many times already in dreams and visions... Full of brilliant imagination, this colourful fantasy draws its strength and inspiration from the strange and beautiful realms of Celtic and Greek myth and legend.