Most people who visit the ruins here reflect on King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan Le Fay, the round table knights. I come from another perspective a real life hero of mine, John Steinbeck, who was captivated by the story of King Arthur as a young boy. I'm captivated by John's stories. So there's little point reviewing what is essentially a ruin, albeit a pretty ruin, by a beautiful cove, by the sea so let me use this review to show the influence of this place in folklore on one of Americas greatest writers. I was delighted to be here because he was here. John visited with his third wife, Elaine Scott. John wrote the book Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights as a retelling of the Arthurian legend, based on the Winchester Manuscript text of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d' Arthur. John began his adaptation in November 1956 long after his two greatest biblically titled novels, the Grapes of Wrath (Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, he is trampling out the vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored..) from the Battle Hymn of the Republic or John Brown's body. John Steinbeck had insisted to his publisher that the entire hymn be replicated in every print of the novel or 'just tear the manuscript up' and East of Eden (where Adam & Eve were banished to.) The introduction to his translation contains an anecdote about him reading them as a young boy. His enthusiasm for Arthur and his affinity for the Anglo - Saxon language are apparent in the work. The book was left unfinished at his death, and ends with the death of chivalry in Arthur's purest knight, Lancelot of the Lake. John Steinbeck took a "living approach" to the retelling of Malory's work. He followed Malory's structure and retained the original chapter titles, but he explored the psychological underpinning of the events, and tuned the use of language to sound natural and accessible to a Modern English speaker so if you are into the legend and the castle then this is a great complementary story. Finally his name came from the Germanic Grosssteinbecken. John's father emigrated to America with his Northern Ireland wife (Hamilton). He removed Gross and en as he felt the Americans couldn't handle a name with three s'es Rick Stein's ancestors most likely had the same Germanic surname. read more