March 2012 Guest Editor Alan Bradley on T. H. White...
No other book, I think, has had such a great influence on my own writing. White’s agent once said of him that he had the power to make grown men cry, and he was right. This is prose as it should be written. It’s about King Arthur. Buy it.
T.H. White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. The Once and Future King, contains all five books about the early life of King Arthur (The Sword in the Stone , The Witch in the Wood , The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind and The Book of Merlyn).
Exquisite comedy offsets the tradegy of Arthur's personal doom as White brings to life the major British epic of all time with brilliance, grandeur, warmth and charm
'White's retelling of the King Arthur legends first appeared in the late 1930s and, although it wasn't originally intended for a young readership it has become immensely popular with children. There is some gore, however, so older children may appreciate it most.' (Kirkus UK)
Author
About T. H. White
Terence Hanbury White was born in 1906 in India, where his father was a member of the Indian Civil Service, and educated at Cheltenham and Cambridge.
The author of poems, books about hunting and other sports, and some detective stories, he found fame and success with 'The Sword in the Stone' (1939), the brilliantly imaginative retelling of King Arthur's early life. He continued the story in 'The Witch in the Wood' (1940) and 'The Ill-Made Knight' (1941). In 1940, he wrote what was believed to be the final volume of Arthurian saga, 'The Candle in the Wind'. The four books were revised and published in 1958 as a single volume titled 'The Once and Future King'.
A further manuscript concluding the story was, however, discovered among T.H. White's papers at the University of Texas at Austin after the author's death in 1964. This is 'The Book of Merlyn', written in 1941, the book that completes a series described by 'The Sunday Times' as 'magnificent'.
