WHITE, T(erence) H(anbury)

(1906-1964)

   UK writer whose overwhelming nostalgia for a lost England expressed itself most vividly in his 2 best-known works, Farewell Victoria (1933) and a superlative tragicomic fantasia on Le Morte D'Arthur (1485)by Sir Thomas Malory (c1408-1471), The Once and Future King (1958), a book comprising 3 earlier novels, substantially recast, plus a previously unpublished 4th section; it was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986) into the stage musical Camelot in 1960 (published as Camelot: A New Musical 1961; filmed 1967). Those 3 earlier novels - The Sword in theStone (1938; rev 1939 US), made into a philistine feature cartoon by Walt Disney in 1963, The Witch in the Wood (1939 US), retitled "The Queen of Air and Darkness" in the recasting, and The Ill-Made Knight (1940 US) - are themselves of very considerable interest as fantasias, as is THW's original concluding section (the 1958 conclusion was written later), The Book of Merlyn (1977 US), whose rejection by THW's UK publishers duringWWII, because of its pacifist content, delayed for 15 years the publication of any version of the whole. The 1958 novel, despite The Sword in the Stone being a juvenile, constitutes a remarkable and pessimistic exploration of the complexity of Evil, of the decay of the Matter of Britain - modern England is envisioned with particular venom in the antDYSTOPIA to which Merlyn subjects the young Arthur as part of his education - and generally of the loss of innocence.Other books by THW are of some sf interest. Early on, Earth Stopped (1934) and Gone to Ground (coll of linked stories 1935), introduced an sf HOLOCAUST to underline thepoints THW wished to make about contemporary civilization through the conversations and fox-hunting manias of a large cast; in the 2nd vol, survivors of the final WAR tell each other exemplary tales (CLUB STORY) while hiding in a cave. Without any source being cited, all the supernatural tales in Gone to Ground were reprinted in The Maharajah, and Other Stories (coll 1981), losing most of their effectiveness through theunacknowledged uprooting. Mistress Masham's Repose (1946 US) tells how a group of Lilliputians, transported to England by Gulliver, have survived in the capacious grounds of the vast estate of Malplaquet for 200 years, until a young girl almost destroys them by treating them as pets. The protagonist of The Elephant and the Kangaroo (1947 US) is a mocking self-portrait of the author; he becomes a new Noah in a hilariously pixilated Eire. In The Master (1957), an sf juvenile, a boy and a girl come across a plot to rule the world from the deserted island of Rockall, where the Merlyn-like Master, 157 years old, has perfected both hypnotic control and a vibration device that will destroy all machines; fortunately he trips over the children's dog, injures himself, and drowns himself in the sea. THW's sf was of a piece with all his work, sharing the sentimentality, satirical power, sadness, longing for retrospectic havens, manic humour and compassion of his best fantasy.

   JC

   About the author: T.H. White: A Biography (1968) by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

   See also: CHILDREN'S SF; GREAT AND SMALL; SWORD AND SORCERY.