The Once and Future King by T.H. White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book. I read it for the first time when I was in high school in the 1970s, and I re-read it every year or two through my twenties, but then didn’t pick it up again until this year, 30+ years later. Reading it again after all this time was like meeting a long-lost friend.

The book is a re-telling of the story of Arthur and the Round Table. If you’ve seen “Camelot” or even “Monte Python and the Holy Grail” you know the basics of the story. The author follows Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” though he focuses much more on Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere. So the plot is literally nothing new, but it is the way the story is told that makes this my favorite book. It’s a compelling story, re-told here with humor, emotion and many amusing anachronisms. The story is about love and friendship but also about humanity, religion, politics and power.

It’s a long book, divided into four sections, but it’s easy to read. I strongly recommend it.