What began in great promise, ended in sorrow and disappointment because of the unforgiving rivalries of men and the clash between good and evil, between Celtic magic and Norman religion. And then the betrayal of Guenever and Launcelot, and the seduction of Arthur by his own half-sister, put the finishing touches on the tragedy. For in subduing the warlords and thugs who pass for ruling authority in England, he makes one set of enemies and in being the son of Uther Pendragon by means of deception, rape, and murder, he has another set of enemies–some of them men, some of them magical. By the time you have read this far, you will have fallen in love with the Wart, I mean Arthur, who is simply a wonderful kid, and who has high hopes of being a really great king. So much for the lighter part of the story. During a tourney in London, Kay sends the Wart to fetch his sword, and being unable to get to it, the Wart instead pulls a sword out of a stone…only this sword is Excalibur, which no one but the born king of Britain can remove from the stone! But he chafes to become a knight, like Kay ahead of him, whom he comes to serve as squire. Wart has other magical adventures even apart from Merlin–including a terrifying rescue mission in a fairy castle. Merlin makes the Wart his special pupil, teaching him lessons about being a man by magically transforming him into different animals.

Some of the deeper mysteries are taught them by the village priest others, by the philosopher Merlin, who is also a wizard and (this is the weird part) who lives backwards in time, so that he knows the future but not the past. But there is more to being a gentleman than jousting, fencing, and archery. In The Sword in the Stone, a boy known as the Wart learns the arts and sciences of being a nobleman, along with his foster-brother Kay, in the forest manor of Kay’s father, Sir Ector. But that is only the first part of a great story, like The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. White’s Four-Books-In-One: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind, which together make the comprehensive classic The Once and Future King.ĭisney animation fans will recognize the first of the four books-within-a-book as the subject of one of Disney’s animated features, and a decent adaptation it is. But, in my view, the definitive account is T. Barron about the youthful “lost years” of Merlin himself. Lately there have even been a series of books by T. Since Malory’s Morte d’Arthur there have been many retellings of the popular legends of Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, Launcelot and Guenever, and the quest for the Holy Grail. Merlin’s beard! Who could I mean, but Merlin? Purchase hereīefore Dumbledore, before even Gandalf, the English imagination conceived a great wizard of whom all others are but pale imitations.

Once and future king sword in the stone