The popularity of the film and the play, Camelot, were due in some part its association with President John F. Kennedy’s brief 1,000 days in office which came to be called Camelot by many, a time in American history of lost hope and ideals. It was also a story the late president was very fond of. Of course it had much more to do with the enduring fascination with the legends of King Arthur which had found new form in the very popular retelling of the tale by T.H. White, The Once and Future King, which proved to be the immediate inspiration for the play and film, as well as a Walt Disney animated feature, The Sword in the Stone (1963). White was born in British India, died in Greece and spent his most creative period in self-imposed exile from his native Britain in Ireland to somehow get away from a world on the verge of war which he so despised. His condemnation of war took form in his interpretation of tales found in the work he most admired Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), and of course Mallory himself appears at the end of White’s work as well as the play and film as young Tom of Warwick who Arthur orders to avoid the coming battle and go back to England and live to tell the tales of Camelot and the Round Table. White’s work initially took the form of several books: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind, and later The Book of Merlyn, the first four of which were incorporated into The Once and Future King in 1939 and 1940. He clearly intended for the entire work to be reedited and include The Book of Merlyn as a final chapter but it never quite happened and the latter work remained unpublished until 1977. It is this last work that was most pointed in its denials and incriminations of war and the limits of humanity, man is joined in the practice of organized warfare against its own kind only by the lowly ant. Regardless of his intent, the work is one of the great pieces of modern English prose putting him in the rare company of T.E. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The language is so rich much of it found its way into the play and the film as did a good deal of his wit and humor.
There is a certain irony in the fact that perhaps the three most influential authors of modern fantasy lived about the same time an in the same area. Indeed, two of them were colleagues and friends, T.H. White died in 1964, and C.S. Lewis passed in 1963 to be followed by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1973. And all called England home. The impact of the tales of Arthur and Merlyn, Narnia, and Middle Earth are undeniable, all are well cherished by their followers and all resulted in significant film adaptations. Indeed, thanks to Peter Jackson in far off New Zealand no less than six epic films have been created to relate the tales of Middle Earth. Lewis and Tolkien lectured at Oxford University and regularly met in local pubs with pipes in hand. White was more of a solitary and quite troubled individual whose personal grappling with the immorality of war caused him to find some kind of refuge in neutral Ireland. All three were products of their time the turbulent first half of the twentieth century and the two World Wars. And all three proved masters of their craft. Aside from the common thread of fantasy in general, all three were singularly affected by the legends of Arthur and Camelot, principally from Mallory who is not only referred to constantly in White but actually takes the stage as a very important character to end The Once and Future King, young Tom of Warwick.
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good read but book damaged
when I received the book the binding was ripped. I buy hardbacks to keep so I take care of them when I read. Disappointed that book was already damaged. But its just a book so I kept it to read... which is entertaining if you want to feel like a kid again.
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