Norma Therese Falby — pen name Norma Lorre Goodrich — was an American professor of French, comparative literature and writing who taught in the University of Southern California and Claremont Colleges for 45 years and published several popular books on Arthuriana. Goodrich was noted for her thesis, first presented in a 1986 book titled King Arthur, that the legendary monarch was not a myth, but a real person, who lived not in England or Wales, as conventionally understood, but in Scotland. In her interpretation, Queen Guinevere was a Pictish queen, and Sir Lancelot a Scottish king. Her scholarly methodology involved back-translating Latin place names found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae to what she believed to be their Celtic originals.Her findings have not been accepted by Galfridian scholars.

Birth:

10 May 1917

Death:

19 September 2006