T. H. White (1906–1964)
Author of The Once and Future King
About the Author
Terence Hanbury White was born on May 29, 1906 in Bombay, India. He attended Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire, and Queen's College, Cambridge. The success of his autobiography, England Have My Bones, allowed him to leave teaching after six years and devote his time to writing. Although he wrote show more a wide array of novels and some poetry, he is best known for The Once and Future King, his four-volume retelling of the legend of King Arthur, which became the basis for both the musical, Camelot, and the Disney film, The Sword in the Stone. White died on January 17, 1964, while returning home from a lecture tour in America. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by T. H. White
The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (1954) 761 copies, 5 reviews
The Once and Future King Vol. 3 & 4 (The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind) (1967) — Author — 42 copies
The Magic World of T.H. White : The Once and Future King - The Book of Merlyn - Mistress Masham's Repose (1980) 40 copies, 1 review
Loved Helen, and other poems 2 copies
Korol Artur : [v 2 t.] 2 copies
King Arthur 1 copy
The Unicorn 1 copy
The maharaja {short story} 1 copy
The Point Of Thirty Miles 1 copy
Dead Mr. Nixon 1 copy
Associated Works
The Best of Both Worlds: An Anthology of Stories for All Ages (1968) — Contributor — 25 copies, 1 review
Essential Modern Classics Fantasy Collection: The Phantom Tollbooth / Elidor / the Sword in the Stone (2010) — Contributor — 7 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- White, T. H.
- Legal name
- White, Terence Hanbury
- Other names
- Aston, James
White, Tim - Birthdate
- 1906-05-29
- Date of death
- 1964-01-17
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Queens' College, University of Cambridge (BA|1928)
Cheltenham College - Occupations
- teacher
writer - Agent
- David Higham
- Cause of death
- heart failure
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Bombay, British India
- Places of residence
- Doolistown, County Meath, Ireland
Alderney, Channel Islands - Place of death
- Piraeus, Athens, Greece
- Burial location
- First Cemetery of Athens, Greece
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
British Author Challenge November 2024: E.M. Delafield & T.H. White in 75 Books Challenge for 2024 (November 2024)
The Once and Future King Group Read: General Thread in 75 Books Challenge for 2010 (June 2010)
Book Discussion: Arthurian Themed Read *Spoiler Free* in The Green Dragon (March 2008)
Reviews
One of my favorite pieces of writing about what science fiction is and what it does comes from China Miéville's introduction to H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon. Miéville argues that science fiction is not really about the future: "It is, like any worthwhile literature, 'about' now, using a technique of rationalized (rather than free-for-all) alienation from the everyday to structure its narratives and investigate the world." But, he points out, there's also a pitfall if you go too show more far in the other direction: "When 'mainstream' writers dip their toes into the fantastic, they often do so with the anxiety of seriousness, keen to stress that their inventions are really 'about' other, meaningful things." What makes the fantastic work for its readers and writers, he claims (and I agree), is that it does both at once. You get a metaphor for the present day but within the world of the story, it's literally true (unlike in mimetic fiction, where metaphor is just metaphor), and that's pleasurable. He uses Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels as an example of this:
It's been a long time since I actually read Gulliver's Travels, not since childhood, but it's my memory that though certainly Brobdingnag, Lilliput, and all the other fantastic countries Gulliver visits are literally true, and the book has certainly provided its share of "great, weird" imagery—that iconic image of Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians, which is on so many book covers and probably appears in every screen adaptation—Swift's emphasis is more on the social satire than the "great, weird" ideas. Like, sure we get swordfights with giant wasps and such, but the point of the novel is to see our human foibles writ large and writ small and writ equine. (I, for one, always though the journey to the place where they got electricity out of cucumbers was underrated.)
Mistress Masham's Repose is a 1946 children's fantasy novel by T. H. White, best known as the writer of The Once and Future King. It's clearly intended to be read aloud (the name of the dedicatee, Amaryllis Virginia Garnett, is even mentioned by the narrator a few times), though in that very British way where there are passages that the adult reader will get much more out of than the child listener, a lot like Kingsley's The Water-Babies. I found it on my wife's shelves and decided it looked interesting enough to read; the book is a sort-of sequel to Gulliver's Travels.
The premise is that there's a young orphan girl named Maria who lives on the rambling country estate that she inherited from her parents, but does not have the money to maintain. Her legal guardian is a cruel vicar, and her day-to-day guardian is an even crueler governess. Her only friends are the estate's sole servant, a cook, and a local absent-minded professor of classics. One day, exploring an island on the estate, she finds a colony of Lilliputians, brought to England and forgotten about, where they've been living for centuries in secret.
The pleasure of the book is that it takes the "great, weird idea" of the Lilliputians very seriously, probably more seriously than Swift himself did. Anticipating books like Mary Norton's The Borrowers (1952) and John Peterson's The Littles (1967), the book gives us a group of little people operating in our world, and asks how they might survive, what they might to do, say, fish in a world where the fish are to them as whales are to us, or how they might be able to intervene to battle against human adults.
The book not only gives the reader this pleasure of the fantastic, it also explores how the characters themselves experience that pleasure. There's one extended sequence where the Professor imagines what he would do if they also got hold of a Brobdingnagian giant. What would be the logistics of capturing it? How would you transport it back to England? What would you do with it then? He doesn't go through with any of this, he can't, but it's fun to see him work it all out. In another passage, Maria and the Professor debate if an island could really fly in the way Swift imagined for Laputa. (And the Professor points out "that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa. I believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they think. There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not think, for every one who does, and these people hate the thinkers like poison. [...] Better to think about cucumbers even, than not to think at all." The book is filled with great, quiet observations like this.)
The book also finds limits to literalizing the impossible. Maria, for example, concocts an idea that Lilliputians might be able to fly in toy airplanes, and tries to make it happen. But she is (metaphorically) crashed down to earth when her pilot (literally) crashes down to earth. As she learns, we can have some fantastic imaginings that cannot be well, realized. Realistic concerns get in the way. This is disappointing to Maria, of course, but part of what makes the book pleasurable to us—if the book is to feel real, there need to be some things that cannot happen.
It's also very funny. I was forever quoting bits to my wife (who, if she had actually read the book, did not remember it all). When the Professor tries to get the local Lord Lieutenant to intervene to protect Maria from the cruelty of the vicar and the governess, who have locked her in the estate's torture dungeon, the Lord Lieutenant objects that such things aren't heard of these days:
Overall, Mistress Masham's Repose has good "worldbuilding" (I kind of shudder to apply the term here, but it fits) and good comedy, but also good themes and great hair-raising escapes and dangers and ingenious protagonists. I found it an utterly delightful 250 pages. I don't know if it would work for most readers, but it's the kind of book that felt squarely aimed at me, and all the better for it. show less
In Swift, for example, Gulliver's journey to Brobdingnag [...] clearly casts a remorseless light on Swift's own society; it also, however, features a sword fight with a giant wasp, a passage the enjoyment of which depends on the specific uncanny/estranging impact of literalizing the impossible: simply, it is a great, weird idea. Weirdness is good to think with, and is also its own end.Miéville goes on to mention "the pleasure he [Wells] took in his oddities" as one of the things that distinguishes First Men from being only satire.
It's been a long time since I actually read Gulliver's Travels, not since childhood, but it's my memory that though certainly Brobdingnag, Lilliput, and all the other fantastic countries Gulliver visits are literally true, and the book has certainly provided its share of "great, weird" imagery—that iconic image of Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians, which is on so many book covers and probably appears in every screen adaptation—Swift's emphasis is more on the social satire than the "great, weird" ideas. Like, sure we get swordfights with giant wasps and such, but the point of the novel is to see our human foibles writ large and writ small and writ equine. (I, for one, always though the journey to the place where they got electricity out of cucumbers was underrated.)
Mistress Masham's Repose is a 1946 children's fantasy novel by T. H. White, best known as the writer of The Once and Future King. It's clearly intended to be read aloud (the name of the dedicatee, Amaryllis Virginia Garnett, is even mentioned by the narrator a few times), though in that very British way where there are passages that the adult reader will get much more out of than the child listener, a lot like Kingsley's The Water-Babies. I found it on my wife's shelves and decided it looked interesting enough to read; the book is a sort-of sequel to Gulliver's Travels.
The premise is that there's a young orphan girl named Maria who lives on the rambling country estate that she inherited from her parents, but does not have the money to maintain. Her legal guardian is a cruel vicar, and her day-to-day guardian is an even crueler governess. Her only friends are the estate's sole servant, a cook, and a local absent-minded professor of classics. One day, exploring an island on the estate, she finds a colony of Lilliputians, brought to England and forgotten about, where they've been living for centuries in secret.
The pleasure of the book is that it takes the "great, weird idea" of the Lilliputians very seriously, probably more seriously than Swift himself did. Anticipating books like Mary Norton's The Borrowers (1952) and John Peterson's The Littles (1967), the book gives us a group of little people operating in our world, and asks how they might survive, what they might to do, say, fish in a world where the fish are to them as whales are to us, or how they might be able to intervene to battle against human adults.
The book not only gives the reader this pleasure of the fantastic, it also explores how the characters themselves experience that pleasure. There's one extended sequence where the Professor imagines what he would do if they also got hold of a Brobdingnagian giant. What would be the logistics of capturing it? How would you transport it back to England? What would you do with it then? He doesn't go through with any of this, he can't, but it's fun to see him work it all out. In another passage, Maria and the Professor debate if an island could really fly in the way Swift imagined for Laputa. (And the Professor points out "that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa. I believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they think. There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not think, for every one who does, and these people hate the thinkers like poison. [...] Better to think about cucumbers even, than not to think at all." The book is filled with great, quiet observations like this.)
The book also finds limits to literalizing the impossible. Maria, for example, concocts an idea that Lilliputians might be able to fly in toy airplanes, and tries to make it happen. But she is (metaphorically) crashed down to earth when her pilot (literally) crashes down to earth. As she learns, we can have some fantastic imaginings that cannot be well, realized. Realistic concerns get in the way. This is disappointing to Maria, of course, but part of what makes the book pleasurable to us—if the book is to feel real, there need to be some things that cannot happen.
It's also very funny. I was forever quoting bits to my wife (who, if she had actually read the book, did not remember it all). When the Professor tries to get the local Lord Lieutenant to intervene to protect Maria from the cruelty of the vicar and the governess, who have locked her in the estate's torture dungeon, the Lord Lieutenant objects that such things aren't heard of these days:
"But, good Lord, my dear chap, you can't do that sort of thing in the nineteenth century, or the twentieth, or whatever it is. I mean, you take the first two figures, and add one, or subtract one, I forgot which, for reasons I never could fathom, possibly owin' to these X's which those chaps are always writin' on monuments, and then it is different. Now, take horses..."I mean, it's funny if you like pompous out-of-touch English people going on about things, and I certainly do. The book is is filled with stuff like that.
"Whether you can or can't, it has been done. I tell you..."
"My old Grandad, or his grandad, I can't remember which, used to ride a hunter in a long point until it foundered, old boy, died, absolutely kaput. Now you couldn't do that sort of thing nowadays, not in this century, whichever it is, without getting the Society for Cruelty to Animals after you. Absolutely couldn't do it. Not done. Out of date. I heard it was the same with dungeons?"
Overall, Mistress Masham's Repose has good "worldbuilding" (I kind of shudder to apply the term here, but it fits) and good comedy, but also good themes and great hair-raising escapes and dangers and ingenious protagonists. I found it an utterly delightful 250 pages. I don't know if it would work for most readers, but it's the kind of book that felt squarely aimed at me, and all the better for it. show less
Extraordinarily vivid story of the process of training a hawk. These birds are utterly without pity and hawking is a sport that has endured for millennia. Unfortunately T.H. White was completely ignorant of how to do this other than through reference books written hundreds of years ago, so he set out in the old style to “man” or break the goshawk to his will by depriving it of sleep for days on end, and himself in the process. The author was fantastically strong minded in groping his show more ignorant way forwards with the training process but was also in a very dark place himself. The book is a product of this and of its time; it was published in 1951. show less
I have no idea what to make of this book. It’s the second book in The Once and Future King quartet, was extensively revised after initial publication, when it was titled The Queen of Air and Darkness. Except The Witch in the Wood is supposedly longer than The Queen of Air and Darkness, but the version I read, which had the former title, was barely 100 pages long. And, to be honest, it didn't have much of a plot. Arthur is now king, but apparently not everyone has accepted this so he has to show more fight to prove himself. Merlyn lectures him on how fighting for the sake of fighting is not a good idea, and while combat may be fun for knights, it isn’t for the serfs, the foot soldiers, who get killed in large numbers. Meanwhile, King Pellinore is visiting Orkney with two companions, while King Lot is off fighting Arthur. Pellinore didn’t want to be there–he was following the Questing Beast, and having great fun, and then he fell in love with the daughter of the King of Flanders, but this magic boat appeared so he climbed into it. And now he’s stuck in Orkney. His friends try to improve his mood by faking the Questing Beast, but the real Questing Beast turns up and falls in love with their fake one (think pantomime horse). Then there’s a big battle and Arthur revolutionises tactics by attacking the knights and not the serfs. So, of course, he wins. This didn’t even feel like a novel, more like an info-dump. The scenes with Sir Grummor and Sir Palomides are funny, but feel like music hall. There are several lectures on politics and authority, which reference Hitler, and are well argued. But none of it feels like a novel in a series of four. I mean, White’s prose is… idiosyncratic, but so much more appealing than Tolkien’s. White throws in anachronisms, but he makes it work. And he’s funny. The Hobbit cannot compare. Two more books to go, but it’s already clear The Once and Future King is greatly superior to The Hobbit. show less
The Once and Future King is a book that feels connected and yet separate. The first portion, made up of the previously standalone novel The Sword in the Stone, reads like a book that parents of the late thirties may have read to their children a chapter at a time before bed. Composed of many small adventures with not much overarching plot, it's also far lighter in tone than much of what follows. While I wouldn't recommend it in its original form for children today, for reasons I'll get to show more later, this is the novel that Disney's The Sword in the Stone was based on. For anyone who grew up with that movie as I did, this should give you some idea of the magical adventures and a bit of the humor to be found here. The second book, however, The Queen of Air and Darkness, takes what feels like a dramatic tonal shift, and the end of the book is serious in the extreme.
All of this makes for a rather unique reading experience. It may induce you to either give up after the first portion, if it's the sort of thing you enjoy, or to give up before you even reach the portion you would enjoy if it isn't. I would suggest skipping the first book if you care to, but the later books draw on knowledge of the earlier ones. I might then suggest reading the first book when you're young and saving the rest for when you're older, but... the problematic content is of the type a young person may not be equipped to view through an appropriately critical lens. For a book that takes place in medieval England, there are a surprising number of remarks disparaging Native Americans. There's also usage of the "n" word. And there's even the type of racism that places certain races of the UK above others (Normans over Saxons and Saxons over Gaels). Among other questionable things. Honestly I made note of so many problematic passages that I would need a separate post to go over them all.
In terms of other content warnings, well, you probably can guess there's violence, although the first book clearly makes an effort to keep it below a certain level. For example, there's a sword fight in which the joke is that no one gets particularly hurt because both parties are wearing armor and clearly neither wants to cause serious injury to the other. In later books you'll find out the fates suffered by foot soldiers who don't wear armor and knights who are going at each other in earnest. You'll also find references to torture and incest and suicide, although these are told through narration rather than being explicitly depicted. In fact, the third person omniscient is used to great effect in allowing the reader to maintain a certain distance from what may otherwise have been incredibly disturbing. The author was working with established mythology and a bloody time in history, and he takes the approach of stating the situation as it is but sparing all the gory details.
Personally, I found myself plodding through the reading for the most part until partway through book three. The first book had some sections that were enjoyable enough that they kept me reading to the end of the little adventure. The second book served as a bridge to different parts of the timeline. But the third is where an overarching plotline that consistently kept my interest was introduced. It may be up to individual readers to determine whether they have the patience for this.
Another factor to consider is that at many points the narrator makes reference to Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, openly stating that events covered in that classic work won't be recounted here. I've only read portions of Le Morte d'Arthur myself and had no trouble understanding this book, but those who want to really dive into this mythology may be best suited starting with the earlier book and getting to this one later. Or maybe reading that one instead.
Personally, I found it interesting to see how the time period in which this book was written affected the way the stories were told. The impact of the first (and later second) world war is clear to see for those who keep an eye out for it, and this led to some reflections about war and violence and how/whether it might be possible to build a just and peaceful society that were what I liked best about the work as a whole. Except that it seemed at times to treat some of the horrors of the second world war a bit too lightly, and I made note of more than one sentence that seemed to lean towards antisemitic. So I'm not fully praising the viewpoint the novel takes on these issues. Really I appreciated that it established a framework that led me to wonder what I myself would have done if I were in King Arthur's shoes.
Other highlights include explanations of medieval life that are easy to understand and assume little prior knowledge of the subject. If you want to learn about a castle layout or the practice of hawking or many other little things without turning to nonfiction resources, this book can help you establish a foundation you can carry into works of fantasy that take your understanding of these things as a given. Not to mention books that take your knowledge of Arthurian legends as a given. There sure seems to be a lot of modern culture that assumes your familiarity with British culture and traditions.
There's also a certain feeling that books like these are to be kept on a pedestal, which in my case was amplified by the fact that the cover of the edition I checked out of the library had quotes by no less than four people praising it as if it's one of the greatest books ever. Personally, while I can say there are some great passages to be found here, especially towards the ending, and while I can understand a certain type of fantasy fan might find the first part to be a fun adventure with vibes similar to The Hobbit, I personally would only recommend this book if you're that type of reader, if you have a particular love for Arthurian legends, or if, like me, you're interested in the cultural significance. There are plenty of other books retelling the stories of King Arthur and his knights, and I certainly don't think this one should be above criticism.
But hey, feel free to say I must be somehow incapable of recognizing this book's true genius. Maybe my Irish ancestors passed down to me "the enormous, the incalculable miasma which is the leading feature of the Gaelic brain" (The Queen of Air and Darkness, Chapter 5). Or maybe we should pause while we read to consider whether harmful implications are being made and whether retellings of certain cultural mythologies might be revered above others for reasons that aren't solely dependent on their objective quality. Maybe we should all be free to form our own opinions. I don't know, just spit balling here*.
* For anyone who has difficulty discerning, yes, that final paragraph was sarcastic. And this footnote is genuine. Keep being you! show less
All of this makes for a rather unique reading experience. It may induce you to either give up after the first portion, if it's the sort of thing you enjoy, or to give up before you even reach the portion you would enjoy if it isn't. I would suggest skipping the first book if you care to, but the later books draw on knowledge of the earlier ones. I might then suggest reading the first book when you're young and saving the rest for when you're older, but... the problematic content is of the type a young person may not be equipped to view through an appropriately critical lens. For a book that takes place in medieval England, there are a surprising number of remarks disparaging Native Americans. There's also usage of the "n" word. And there's even the type of racism that places certain races of the UK above others (Normans over Saxons and Saxons over Gaels). Among other questionable things. Honestly I made note of so many problematic passages that I would need a separate post to go over them all.
In terms of other content warnings, well, you probably can guess there's violence, although the first book clearly makes an effort to keep it below a certain level. For example, there's a sword fight in which the joke is that no one gets particularly hurt because both parties are wearing armor and clearly neither wants to cause serious injury to the other. In later books you'll find out the fates suffered by foot soldiers who don't wear armor and knights who are going at each other in earnest. You'll also find references to torture and incest and suicide, although these are told through narration rather than being explicitly depicted. In fact, the third person omniscient is used to great effect in allowing the reader to maintain a certain distance from what may otherwise have been incredibly disturbing. The author was working with established mythology and a bloody time in history, and he takes the approach of stating the situation as it is but sparing all the gory details.
Personally, I found myself plodding through the reading for the most part until partway through book three. The first book had some sections that were enjoyable enough that they kept me reading to the end of the little adventure. The second book served as a bridge to different parts of the timeline. But the third is where an overarching plotline that consistently kept my interest was introduced. It may be up to individual readers to determine whether they have the patience for this.
Another factor to consider is that at many points the narrator makes reference to Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, openly stating that events covered in that classic work won't be recounted here. I've only read portions of Le Morte d'Arthur myself and had no trouble understanding this book, but those who want to really dive into this mythology may be best suited starting with the earlier book and getting to this one later. Or maybe reading that one instead.
Personally, I found it interesting to see how the time period in which this book was written affected the way the stories were told. The impact of the first (and later second) world war is clear to see for those who keep an eye out for it, and this led to some reflections about war and violence and how/whether it might be possible to build a just and peaceful society that were what I liked best about the work as a whole. Except that it seemed at times to treat some of the horrors of the second world war a bit too lightly, and I made note of more than one sentence that seemed to lean towards antisemitic. So I'm not fully praising the viewpoint the novel takes on these issues. Really I appreciated that it established a framework that led me to wonder what I myself would have done if I were in King Arthur's shoes.
Other highlights include explanations of medieval life that are easy to understand and assume little prior knowledge of the subject. If you want to learn about a castle layout or the practice of hawking or many other little things without turning to nonfiction resources, this book can help you establish a foundation you can carry into works of fantasy that take your understanding of these things as a given. Not to mention books that take your knowledge of Arthurian legends as a given. There sure seems to be a lot of modern culture that assumes your familiarity with British culture and traditions.
There's also a certain feeling that books like these are to be kept on a pedestal, which in my case was amplified by the fact that the cover of the edition I checked out of the library had quotes by no less than four people praising it as if it's one of the greatest books ever. Personally, while I can say there are some great passages to be found here, especially towards the ending, and while I can understand a certain type of fantasy fan might find the first part to be a fun adventure with vibes similar to The Hobbit, I personally would only recommend this book if you're that type of reader, if you have a particular love for Arthurian legends, or if, like me, you're interested in the cultural significance. There are plenty of other books retelling the stories of King Arthur and his knights, and I certainly don't think this one should be above criticism.
But hey, feel free to say I must be somehow incapable of recognizing this book's true genius. Maybe my Irish ancestors passed down to me "the enormous, the incalculable miasma which is the leading feature of the Gaelic brain" (The Queen of Air and Darkness, Chapter 5). Or maybe we should pause while we read to consider whether harmful implications are being made and whether retellings of certain cultural mythologies might be revered above others for reasons that aren't solely dependent on their objective quality. Maybe we should all be free to form our own opinions. I don't know, just spit balling here*.
* For anyone who has difficulty discerning, yes, that final paragraph was sarcastic. And this footnote is genuine. Keep being you! show less
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