The Once and Future King & The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of retellings concerning King Arthur, Guenever, Merlin, Lancelot, the Knights of the Round Table and the Kingdom of Camelot, but only a few of them attain literary quality and even less become classics. T.H. White's four-part masterpiece (or five-part, depending on what edition you have) definitely falls into the elite category.

With oddly chatty and anachronistic prose, which describes Sir Ector as drinking port and discussing Eton before explaining that he's only using these terms because "by mentioning the modern it is easier to give you the feel," White moves from comedy and satire to grandeur and tragedy, with each book getting successively darker as they follow Arthur's growth from childhood to old age. Likewise, White extensively draws upon quotes and ideas from other scholars and... Read More

The Goshawk by T.H. White

When I found out that T.H. White, the author of The Once and Future King, had written The Goshawk, a book about training a hawk, I jumped at the chance to read it. I love stories about birds of prey (probably fostered by a childhood obsession with My Side of the Mountain) and have often fantasized about becoming an amateur falconer.

Based on The Goshawk, these fantasies are not likely to come true. T.H. White describes the process for training a hawk in stark detail and it does not sound appealing or practical for my current lifestyle, which involves sleep and sanity and a minimum of animal abuse. Apparently you have to keep the bird awake and hungry for two or three days straight until it passes out from exhaustion, resting... Read More