The story of Tristan is well known in the Western tradition of Romance. Few have not heard of Wagner's opera and the love elixir which Tristan and Iseut drink by accident. The story is already well established in the early medieval period, where there are several competing manuscripts, most of them incomplete for various reasons. John Watson has revisited these medieval origins and achieved a synthesis, a complete Tristan. Here are the sea voyages, the ill-fated love potion, the black or white sail hoisted as a signal. And here, re-imagining the whole, Watson has made a fitting companion piece to his earlier The Tale of Gawain.
