The Once and Future King

T. H. White, 1939

Date Read: 7/13/23

The 1960s Disney film The Sword in the Stone is one of my all time favorite movies and I hadn't actually known it was based on the first book of The Once and Future King. Loosely based. The characters are somewhat like those of the book and some of the scenes are in the movie, but for the most part it is inspired by the novel.

The novel actually has four books: the Sword in the Stone, the Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-made Knight, and the Candle in the Wind.

There is a major tonal shift between book one and book two. Like, you could read book one to kids, the flavor is similar to the movie. Book two starts with a rape and a cat being boiled alive. I feel like he started by writing a nice fantasy story (clearly he was following Mallory as he mentions him and The Death of Arthur many times) and then as things got worse in WWII changed the story into an allegory.

It gets darker and more violent/gory as it progresses. There's no subtlety about Lancelot and Guenever's sexual affair. There's no secret about Arthur having sex with his own sister, and then trying to kill their son Mordred. It goes some really dark and awful places.

All in all, it (the four books combined into one story, as in the G. P. Putnam and Son's 1958 edition I read) were fantastic. I don't usually read fantasy. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel, despite the gore and very, very obvious allusion to the political situation in Europe at the time the novel was written. (Especially at the end, where it's basically just the author talking about war).

This is a foundational European/British "fairy tale"...what could be more English than King Arthur? He even makes friends with Robin Hood!