T H White

T H White (Terence Hanbury White, 1906–1964) was a writer, best known for the series of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King.

He was born to English parents in Bombay, India, and educated at Cheltenham College and Cambridge. He taught for four years at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire. He then went and lived in a workman's cottage, where he wrote and "revert[ed] to a feral state", engaging in falconry, hunting, and fishing. In 1938 he published The Sword in the Stone' about the boyhood of King Arthur. In 1939 he moved to Ireland, and wrote further novels about King Arthur. In 1946 he moved to Alderney and remained there for the rest of his life. In 1958 he completed his fourth Arthurian novel, and they were published together as The Once and Future King, which became the basis of the Broadway musical Camelot and the Disney cartoon film The Sword in the Stone. He died onboard ship in Piraeus, Greece, and is buried in Athens.

According to Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1967 biography, White was "a homosexual and a sado-masochist. He came close to marrying several times but had no enduring romantic relationships, and wrote in his diaries of Zed, a young boy: "I have fallen in love with Zed [...] the whole situation is an impossible one. All I can do is behave like a gentleman. It has been my hideous fate to be born with an infinite capacity for love and joy with no hope of using them." Other writers however have disputed his homosexuality.