King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

A sword waits in the stone outside St. Paul's, and its promise is plain: "Whoso pulleth out the sword from this stone is born the rightful King of England." A boy raised in secret by Sir Ector draws it out as though it were nothing. From that quiet wonder comes a crown, a war with rebel kings, and an arm rising from a moonlit lake to offer Excalibur. Then come the knights who fill the Round Table: Pellinore chasing his questing beast, poor Balin whose cursed sword brings ruin, and Lancelot, called the greatest knight in the world.

The prose keeps its old formal music, archaic and stately, moving through tournaments and marvels, giants slain and courts held in splendor. Yet a plainer wisdom runs beneath the armor. "Worthiness and brave deeds are not shown by fair raiment," Balin says, "but manhood and truth lie hid within the heart." Honor, mercy, and love are tested again and again, and the tenderness is never far from the grief.

For all its battles, this is a story that knows what such glory costs. A fellowship bound by oath and affection carries its own undoing within it, foretold and unhurried, and the book holds both the height of the reign and the shadow lengthening across it. Anyone who has met these names only in fragments will find them here whole, in the telling that shaped them all.