This was mentioned on QI a while back.
Troy in England?
According to Dutch-born writer Iman Wilkens, the Trojan War actually took place in England. He suggests that Homer based his story on an earlier oral tale from Northern Europe in which an area of Southern England was attacked by Celts who wanted control of the tin mines there.
Wilkens suggests that Troy was located in the Gog Magog Hills near Cambridge. Furthermore, the area Homer called ‘Crete’ was Scandinavia, ‘Sparta’ was in Spain and ‘Lesbos’ was actually the Isle of Wight.
The Iliad’s warriors use horses in battle but the Greeks always fought on foot until around the 3rd century ad. The Celts, on the other hand, were famed for their horsemanship.
Rivers mentioned in The Iliad include the Temese, the Scamander and the Simois which Wilkens thinks are the Thames, the Cam and the Ouse. The weather also sounds distinctly British rather than Mediterranean – there are ceaseless descriptions of rain and Troy is referred to as the city ‘whipped by the winds’. Homer also makes references to the tides – in the Mediterranean the difference in tide is very small whereas in the Atlantic Ocean the changes are much more dramatic.
The Iliad doesn’t mention ‘Greeks’ anywhere. Mentions of ‘Barbarians’ (what the Greeks called foreigners) are also absent. Troy’s attackers are referred to as Danaans and Achaeans who respectively could be the Danes and people from Argos, a Kingdom of Northern France.