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francescaj 's review for:
The Once and Future King
by T.H. White
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
A maddeningly disjointed, incredible, hilarious moving book. Each of the four parts are so different tonally but are united in the love of nature & TH White’s pacifist sentiments. The first is incredibly funny and much sillier than I expected but this humour breaks through in unexpected places such as the comparison between Lancelot & Donald Bradman. The final book is deeply moving and an amazing piece of writing. All the glory is stripped from these characters of legend. Arthur & Lancelot have all their flaws revealed. Deaths all happen off page. We see only the waste, the heartbreak. The death of Gawain is a great example of the pathos typical, announced inexplicably in a letter written by Gawain himself where his handwriting is compared to that of a schoolboy ‘feet hooked round the legs of a stool and his tongue out writing carefully’ Even if the novel didn’t make explicit reference it is very clearly written in the aftermath of WWII. There’s very little glory in White’s version of medieval Britain. One suspects he saw little glory in the contemporary.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs