Rediscovered only 200 years ago, and published for the first time in 1839, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the earliest great stories of English literature. It narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who challenges the virtuous Gawain to a wager, resulting in a fantastical quest. Simon Armitage's new version is meticulously responsible to the tact and sophistication of the original, but is utterly deserving of being read as an original new poem. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two northern poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscapes - acoustic, physical and metaphorical.