Thirdly, I felt like this was a very moral and philosophical book. And Lancelot - the ill-made knight, the self-loathing hero of the round table who made a lot of mistakes and yet always tried his best to be moral (except where Guinevere was concerned, of course). Guinevere, the stubborn and difficult to understand queen/mistress - White often just tells us straight out that he doesn't know why she made the choices she did. Arthur, the imperfect, naive, thoughtful and above all, forgiving king. Second, much of the book is devoted to a character study of Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot. Obviously this is a fantasy book and it's based on legend, but either way, we read a lot of political and historical stuff. The book is, to me, chiefly three different things.įirst, it is a 'historical' study of England at the time, which is both interesting and confusing, with many Lords and Kings and battles etc. He sometimes appears to mock them and their ways (oh, especially those blundering old knights.), other times he pities them, but mostly, I felt as though he was trying to understand them and why they made the choices they did. He's like your friend or fellow book club member, who just happened to be there, in the middle ages, and he's telling you the story with his own language and always using references to modern day concerns and people. White, our beloved author, is a genius, really.

The first section of the book is essentially the Disney movie, and that part does grab you and you love Wart so much that you keep reading just to find out how it ends for him (although, it got harder and harder to keep reading for a while there, in the middle - it got a bit slow).

This book is so much more than just Arthur and Camelot. Then my book club chose this as our monthly selection and I finally decided it was time to tackle this monster. Ever since I saw the musical 'Camelot' in the theater when I was in high school, the story just didn't appeal to me. It's been a while since I read a serious chunkster like that (besides Harry Potter, which somehow in my mind doesn't really count.).īesides that, I am just not a fan of 'Authur' stories, despite my deep love of the Disney movie The Sword and the Stone, of course.

King arthur the once and future king