T. H. White
born May 29, 1906, Bombay, India
died Jan. 17, 1964, Piraeus, Greece
English novelist, social historian, and
satirist who was best known for his brilliant
adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century
romance, Morte Darthur, into a quartet of novels
called The Once and Future King.
White was educated at Cheltenham College and
at Cambridge. He taught at Stowe School
(1930–36), and while there he attained his first
real critical success with an autobiographical
volume, England Have My Bones (1936). He
afterward devoted himself exclusively to writing
and to studying such recondite subjects as the
Arthurian legends, which were to provide the
material for his books. White was by nature a
recluse, for long periods isolating himself from
human society and spending his time hunting,
fishing, and looking after his strange
collection of pets.
The Once and Future King (1958) comprises The
Sword in the Stone (1939), The Queen of Air and
Darkness—first published as The Witch in the
Wood (1940)—The Ill-Made Knight (1941), and The
Candle in the Wind. The Once and Future King was
adapted in 1960 into a highly successful musical
play, Camelot; a motion picture, also called
Camelot (1967), was based on the play. White’s
other works include The Goshawk (1951), a study
of falconry, and two works of social history,
The Age of Scandal (1950) and The Scandalmonger
(1951).
