Like British scholars C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, Terence Hanbury White turned his concern for the events leading to World War II into the unexpected--a highly original children's book, The Sword in the Stone (1938). Unlike them White wrote his first Arthurian novel in the isolation of a gamekeeper's cottage at Stowe Ridings after resigning as the popular head of the English department of the Stowe School. At Stowe Ridings he deliberately lived a reclusive life, removing himself from the temptation of his strong pederastic feelings, devoting all of his energy to the voracious reading of books and the arduous accomplishment of ordinary skills such as milking and plowing, and exotic ones such as falconry. He reserved his affection solely for Brownie, his red setter. Vehemently opposed to war, he waffled between active participation and escape to Ireland.

White's children's novel about Arthur's youth and Merlyn's...