# T. H. White - Maker: Novelist - Date: 1906–1964 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/t-h-white/ > A lonely, brilliant schoolmaster and falconer who retold Malory as The Once and Future King — giving the world Wart, a befuddled Merlyn who lives backward in time, and the musical Camelot. **Why it matters:** White made the Arthurian legend funny, humane and anti-war for the twentieth century. His Sword in the Stone became Disney's, his tetralogy became Camelot, and his Merlyn is the ancestor of countless wizard-mentors in fantasy and games. ## Quick answers **Who was T. H. White?** A lonely, brilliant schoolmaster and falconer who retold Malory as The Once and Future King — giving the world Wart, a befuddled Merlyn who lives backward in time, and the musical Camelot. **When was T. H. White born?** T. H. White was born in 1906 in Bombay, British India and died in 1964. **What is T. H. White known for?** T. H. White is best known for The Once and Future King. **Why does T. H. White matter to fantasy and games?** White made the Arthurian legend funny, humane and anti-war for the twentieth century. His Sword in the Stone became Disney's, his tetralogy became Camelot, and his Merlyn is the ancestor of countless wizard-mentors in fantasy and games. ## Life Terence Hanbury White was born in Bombay on 29 May 1906, the son of a police superintendent in British India. His parents' marriage was violent and unhappy, and they separated when he was fourteen; White later described his childhood as one of terror, and he carried loneliness and a sense of damage all his life. He was sent to Cheltenham College, which he hated, and then to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he took a first in English in 1928 despite a year off with tuberculosis. He taught English at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire for four years, and in 1936 — after the success of his memoir *England Have My Bones* — he resigned and moved into a gamekeeper's cottage to write. There he threw himself into rural pursuits with obsessive intensity: fishing, hunting, flying, and, famously, trying to train a goshawk by the old methods, an ordeal he recorded in *The Goshawk* (1951). In 1939 he went to Ireland and stayed through the war as a conscientious objector in County Meath, then in 1946 settled on the Channel Island of Alderney. He never married; biographers have written of his struggles with his sexuality and with drink, and of his deep attachment to his dogs. He died of heart failure aboard a ship in the harbor of Piraeus, Greece, on 17 January 1964, on his way home from a lecture tour of the United States, and is buried in Athens. ## Work In 1937 White reread Malory's [Le Morte d'Arthur](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/le-morte-darthur/) and found it unexpectedly thrilling. *The Sword in the Stone* (1938) imagined Arthur's boyhood: the Wart, a foster child in the Forest Sauvage, is educated by the wizard Merlyn, who lives backward through time and turns the boy into a fish, a hawk, an ant and a goose so that he can learn from them about power and its abuses. It is comic, anachronistic, tender and full of the natural history White loved. He went on to *The Witch in the Wood* (1939) and *The Ill-Made Knight* (1940), the tragedy of Lancelot, and to a final book about the war between Arthur and Mordred. Revised and darkened — the Wart's lessons now pointedly about the evils of might — the sequence was published in 1958 as [The Once and Future King](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-once-and-future-king/), in four parts: *The Sword in the Stone*, *The Queen of Air and Darkness*, *The Ill-Made Knight* and *The Candle in the Wind*. A fifth book, *The Book of Merlyn*, cut from the collection, appeared posthumously in 1977. White also wrote *Mistress Masham's Repose* (1946), about a girl who discovers Lilliputians living on her estate. ## Legacy White is the great twentieth-century interpreter of [Malory](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/thomas-malory/) and of [Arthurian Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/arthurian-fantasy/). At the end of *The Once and Future King* Arthur knights a page named Tom of Warwick and sends him away to carry the story on — White's tribute to Malory himself. Lerner and Loewe's Broadway musical *Camelot* (1960) was adapted from the book, and Disney's animated *The Sword in the Stone* (1963) from its first part; both made his Wart and Merlyn familiar to millions. Later writers, [J. K. Rowling](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-k-rowling/) among them, have acknowledged his influence, and it is easy to see the Wart's education in the schooling of young wizards in [Harry Potter](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/harry-potter/). White is not on [Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/)'s [Appendix N](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/appendix-n/), and no game mechanic derives from him. His imprint on games is one of character and tone. The eccentric, absent-minded wizard-mentor who knows too much — part sage, part comedian — became a stock figure of fantasy and of the [NPCs](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/non-player-character/) who send young heroes on their way. His Arthurian world, alongside Malory's, lies behind the Camelots of the tabletop, from [Greg Stafford](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/greg-stafford/)'s [King Arthur Pendragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/king-arthur-pendragon/) to Arthurian heroes statted up in [TSR](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/)'s *Deities & Demigods*, and the screen Camelots of the 1960s through [Excalibur](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/excalibur-film/). And White's central theme — that the point of power is to restrain force rather than to use it — is the question every good paladin in every campaign eventually has to answer. ## Facts - White was a schoolmaster at Stowe School for four years before leaving in 1936 to write full time. - His Merlyn lives backward in time, remembering the future and forgetting the past — which is why he can mention things that have not yet been invented. - He spent the Second World War in County Meath, Ireland, as a conscientious objector, reworking his Arthurian books. - The Once and Future King (1958) collected four books, including a heavily revised Sword in the Stone (1938). - The Broadway musical Camelot (1960) and Disney's animated The Sword in the Stone (1963) were both adapted from his work during his lifetime. - He died aboard a ship at Piraeus, Greece, on 17 January 1964, returning from a lecture tour of the United States. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._H._White) - [Wikipedia: The Once and Future King](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King) - [Wikipedia: The Sword in the Stone (novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_in_the_Stone_(novel)) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.