The Once and Future King – T.H. White

You may know this title best from Disney’s ‘Sword in the Stone’, or the classic musical ‘Camelot’, both of which are based on these books, but this five (four originally) part novel was a huge leap forward in retelling the King Arthur story in the twentieth century, and is arguably one of the must under-rated and best fantasy novels in modern literature, sadly rarely mentioned alongside praises for Tolkien or C.S.Lewis.

I first read this at University while I was studying Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory, which was where White got many of his own ideas and structure (Malory himself even makes a cameo appearance). Only the first part (Book 1- The Sword in the Stone) tends to get much mainstream attention, which is a shame as the whole narrative story is wonderful, and I particularly love The Book of Merlyn, the final chapter which was only published after White’s death. This is the cover you can see above.

At lot of Arthurian tropes (Merlin living his life backwards, Arthur as a young boy named ‘Wart’, being turned into animals to learn human and animal nature) spring from TH White’s work, as does Disney’s Madame Mim, but let’s not go there. It isn’t just the purely Arthurian fiction he influenced either, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, for example,has a great tribute scene of transforming humans into geese to learn their nature, though it has to be said there’s less subsequent humping in the original (none).

The Once and Future King is very funny, and I’ve never thought of Robin Hood in the same light again (in this he’s called ‘Robin Wood’, as he says himself, why would he be called Hood, he lived in the Wood?), but is also a very scholarly work, using many myths and legends, and not just the better known ones, to weave a complex and sometimes challenging story.

It’s the transformative parts of the final book (the ant scene is brilliant) that really caught my attention the first time I read the book, and the lightness of touch and inventive ways of introducing different philosophies and viewpoints has always been an inspiration to my writing since. A book of which you frequently think ‘I must read that again soon’ has to be included on my list of influences.