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This thread is meant to discuss the general features of our May group reading. For each book in the series a separate thread will be created.

Not my first book by T H White, having read The Master many years ago, when I was eleven, of which I retain little other than that it was in part set on Rockall and White again excelled at nature writing, of which I was not then as appreciative.
Reading White’s Wikipedia entry after finishing the first book, I am not surprised to learn that White was a pacifist. His implicit comparison of the ant and the white fronted goose in The Sword in the Stone makes this position fairly clear.

Have just finished my copy of The Once and Future King, which includes a final part called The Book of Merlyn (written 1941, published 1977) which was published separately following White's death.
This book, which expands upon the events at the end of The Candle in the Wind, consists largely of a philosophical discussion between Arthur, Merlyn and animals from The Sword in the Stone regarding Man and his place in the world.
Although written in 1941, it was not published until 1977, after White’s death, and much of the best writing (about the ants and the white fronted geese) has been incorporated into The Sword in the Stone in 1958 when it was published as The Once and Future King.
There are several extra chapters on the white fronted geese which enjoyably fill out this story, and at the end there is a masterful quoting from William Blake’s Jerusalem, which are the words to a British hymn with music by Parry, which brilliantly encapsulates the argument that it is the striving towards the goal that is important, not the goal, which is unattainable without a loss of humanity.
I am glad to have read this immediately after The Once and Future King, but I think it does need to be read after, as it is more of a philosophical summation of the ideas in the earlier books.

In summary, this is a wonderful, moving collection of books, well worth reading in sequence in their entirety.
The Sword in the Stone is a fantastic children’s story, with plenty of excellent nature writing and humour. The middle books are readable, but workmanlike; however, they are necessary for the overall tragic arc of the stories, which is brilliantly achieved in The Candle in the Wind.
Well worth its place on James Mustich’s list.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this reading of the classic retelling of the Arthurian legend. I was adventurous and very fun to read. I was struck most by different styles of each individual book. And in my opinion they got better as they went along. I really had not expected the Sword in the Stone to be so "Disney". I can't help but wonder how I would have thought of it had I never seen Disney's interpretation. The stories definitely got darker and more adult (in topic and writing style) as the volumes went on.

A great classic that I am very glad I read.

I'm slightly behind schedule for this reading: I haven't been able to buy a copy of the Italian translation of The Once and Future King (it was out of print when I was looking for it) nor to find a library copy available in Italian. I've eventually managed to borrow a 1979 English edition and I'm currently reading it.
I'm now halfway through the second book and I'm really enjoying White's style and rich imagination. This is going to be a very pleasant journey!

After reading The Once and Future King, I have just read The First Kingdom by Max Adams which although coming to no conclusion as to whether Arthur really existed, provides an interesting, albeit detailed, exploration of Britain (mainly England) in the fifth to seventh centuries. This allowed me to understand why we don’t know whether Arthur is legendary or not, as the few written documents that survive this period and provide details of general history were written some time after the events reported, and may be recording politically favourable stories (not necessarily facts).