TH White. A Biography

T H White, author of The Sword in The Stone, The Once and Future King, The Book of Merlyn, The Goshawk, and many other works of English literature, died at sea from a heart attack in 1964, aged 58. The eminent novelist and critic Sylvia Townsend Warner was asked to wrote his biography, the only study of his life, now republished for a new generation. The biography was published in 1967 and was Warner’s greatest critical success since her first novel, Lolly Willowes, in 1926. It reveals White’s passionate life, his determination to learn, his lifelong worship of hawks and dogs, his self-exile to Ireland during the Second World War, the creation of The Sword in the Stone, the first in the tetralogy The Once and Future King, and the unexpected wealth and fame that came with the Disney cartoon. Warner treats White’s repressed homosexuality and his sexual predilections with humane understanding in this wise portrait of a tormented literary giant, written by a novelist and a poet.