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Fully two months after I decided on this challenge, I have finally come up with a provisional reading list for my Century of Arthur! I doubt I will get through this all in a year, but I’m really looking forward to revisiting the Arthurian legends. I really enjoyed studying them at school (my favourite was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and I read some adaptations as a teenager, but haven’t really engaged with them since then. Since these legends have been adapted over and over, I thought it would be fun to try and read an adaptation or retelling of the Matter of Britain from every decade over the past hundred years. I’m looking forward to seeing how people from different eras have interpreted and retold these very familiar stories. I’ve tried to get a real mix of genres and concepts on my list, but like my Classics Club challenge I will probably make changes as I go along. Anyway, here is my provisional reading list:
1920s – I am really struggling to find any novel from the 1920s that is even loosely connected to the Arthurian legends! This is part of why I haven’t finished my list until now. Absolutely tonnes of poetry, but no novels at all. Weirdly, they seem to be published right up until 1919, and then start again in 1930. Anyway, I’ll keep looking for a novel, but if I can’t find one I will use TS Eliot’s poem The Waste Land here (1922), since somehow I have never read it.
1930s – War in Heaven (Charles W S Williams, 1930). I’ve never read anything by this member of the Inklings (nor any member except CS Lewis and the two Tolkiens), but I have wanted to for a long time. This sounds like a pleasingly weird book – a kind of religious mystery about the search for the Holy Grail.
1940s – That Hideous Strength (CS Lewis, 1945). More Inklings! It is that era, after all. This is the only reread on my list. Will I find it less outrageously misogynistic than I did as a teenager? Only time will tell. It’s the only one of the Space Trilogy I’ve never revisited. Out of the Silent Planet is a book I really love, and Perelandra has many merits as well, although Lewis’s weirdness about women is starting to creep in by that point. I have read and enjoyed both several times – maybe I will be able to enjoy this more as an adult, and having read more of Lewis’s work.
1950s – To the Chapel Perilous (Naomi Mitchison, 1955). This is the first of the books that I heard of specifically because I was planning for this challenge, and it’s maybe the one I’m most excited about. As far as I can tell, the premise for this book is “how would rival tabloid journalists have covered the whole Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere situation?”, which sounds like tremendous fun.
1960s – Sword at Sunset (Rosemary Sutcliff) This is technically a sequel to The Lantern Bearers, but that’s aimed at children. This is the first in the series that is written for adults, and I’ve heard it’s a good place to start. In fact, I’ve heard such good things about this overall! I believe this is set most more explicitly post-Roman withdrawal than a lot of Arthurian books. Sutcliff was an historical fiction writer before she was a fantasy writer, so I expect the historical aspects of this to be good.
1970s – The Crystal Cave (Mary Stewart, 1970). I already love Mary Stewart’s writing, so this is probably the safest bet on the list, and the one I am likely to start with. This is a first person story as told by the young Merlin in his pre-Arthurian days, telling the story of his travels through Wales and Brittany.
1980s – The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay, 1984). This is exciting – the first time travel novel on the list, and the first one by a non-Brit. The Summer Tree is a portal fantasy in which University of Toronto students travel to an Arthurian world. Kay’s fantasy writing credentials are impeccable: he was selected by Christopher Tolkien to help with the posthumous editing and organisation of The Silmarillion. He’s also written stacks of other historical fantasy books that sound great, so hopefully if I enjoy this there will be much more for me to explore in his body of work.
1990s – The Winter King (Bernard Cornwell, 1995). This is the first in Cornwell’s Warlord series, which depicts Arthur as, well, a warlord. It was the recent adaptation of these novels that made me want to revisit the Arthurian legends that captivated me as a teenager, though I have to say I couldn’t make it through the first episode of the adaptation. I think Iain de Caestecker is an extremely talented actor who can turn his hand to almost anything, but it turns out that one thing he can’t do is “be Welsh”. (It did seem good apart from the accents, albeit rather bloody, so I’m sure I will give it another go at some point).
2000s – Here Lies Arthur (Philip Reeve, 2007). This is classified as young adult fiction because it’s published by Scholastic, but in fact when I read Reeve’s Mortal Engines a few years ago I thought it had been misclassified. It had teenage protagonists, but it felt much more like an adult dystopian novel. I wonder if this will be similar. Anyway, rather than being an adaptation of the legends, this is a kind of origin story as to how they might have come about – which sounds really interesting. (Incidentally, my back-up option for this decade is Avalon High by Meg Cabot, the author of The Princess Diaries, which I absolutely loved in my early teens).
2010s – The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2015). In all honesty, I have tried to read this post-Arthurian fantasy novel multiple times and got nowhere, so this is a last attempt at it. If unsuccessful, I will replace it with something else, but I love two of Ishiguro’s novels so much that I want to give it one more go. This novel is about an elderly couple living in a post-Arthurian world who seem to have lost their memories. They vaguely recall that they might have had a son, and set out to visit him.
As for the 2020s, rather like the 1920s, they seem on Arthurian retellings. The only one I could find seems to have rather a lot of graphic scenes of sexual assault, going by the reviews, so I think I’ll skip it. Maybe by the time I get to the end of the challenge, a new adaptation or retelling will have been published!
There are a few other things I want to read: TH White’s The Once and Future King, which I have wanted to read for years. I haven’t decided yet whether to count it as a series of short novels, published in the 30s and 40s, or a huge one published in 1958 – but I definitely want to read it. I will also probably read The Fall of Arthur by JRR Tolkien (his unfinished poem on the Matter of Britain), and Mark Twain’s a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; neither of them fit the parameters of the challenge, but I do want to read both. There was also a Japanese treatment of the legends, published in 1905: Kairo-kō: A Dirge (seems cheery), which sounds like it’s mostly based on The Lady of Shalott. I was fascinated by Tennyson’s poem as a child and would love to read this, but it looks like it’s difficult to get hold of in English. If I come across an affordable translation, though, I will definitely include it.
There are also many films I would like to watch as part of this challenge – top of the list are A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1931), Camelot (1967), The Fisher King (1991), and The Green Knight (2021). I am sure I will also rewatch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, since I need no excuse whatsoever to do that.
I’m really looking forward to this challenge – and if you have a favourite adaptation, retelling, or hokey 1940s musical film based on these legends that I’ve missed out, please do tell me!
louloureads 
The only one I’ve read is The Once and Future King, long, long ago! I’d like to read The Buried Giant sometime, though it sounds a bit weird. Have fun – I’m looking forward to following your progress and seeing if you tempt me along the way…
The couple of times I’ve tried to read The Buried Giant it was just too vague to grip me – but I thought that the first time I tried The Remains of the Day, which ended up becoming an all-time favourite. So I’m still hopeful!
So often it just comes down to timing. I hope this is the time that it works for you!
This looks like fun! That Hideous Strength was the first book I thought of as I started reading this! I don’t think I’ve reread it since I was about 12. It was the weirdness of it that turned me off more than the misogyny at that point. I loved The Buried Giant but I feel like I’m in the minority on that one. And I have a copy of The Once and Future King somewhere about but have never read it so maybe you will inspire me! I have to confess, most of what I know about Arthur is from comic books and cartoons!
My very vague memory of That Hideous Strength is “a woman causes some sort of apocalypse by not being 100% subserviant to her husband at all times”. This may well be a completely unfair misconstruction, since I last read it over half my life ago! I’m glad to hear you had a positive experience with The Buried Giant – it did get very mixed reviews but I love The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go so much that I’ll always keep trying with Ishiguro, no matter how many of his other books have disappointed me.
What I remember about That Hideous Strength is that Merlin comes back and that seems very meaningful for the characters in ways I did not understand as a 12-year-old. I also very distinctly remember the main character (Jane?) being told at one point that because of her actions she had missed the very specific moment when she could have gotten pregnant with a child who would have grown up to change the world for the better. Why that stuck with me so much is probably something I need to unpack in therapy but it is a scene I have remembered.
Buried Giant had a very Tolkien feel to me – more like his writing in The Silmarillion than LOTR. I see it has going along with Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun because they are all books where Ishiguro explores the idea of love and what it means to be human.
I will read your reviews with interest, though the Knights of the Round Table seem very remote from Australia.
When I was in a church youth group we were all very keen on CS Lewis but I haven’t read him since. I would probably re-read Out of the Silent Planet if I ever came across it, just for old times sake.
I’ve always been very fond of CS Lewis, despite his peculiar beliefs about women (peculiar even for his time and class). I read his stuff over and over as a teenager, and I think Out of the Silent Planet is excellent as SF. I wish he’d written more in that genre, though I’ve no idea what I’ll make of That Hideous Strength when I get to it. (And I wish there was more SF on the list in general – I will be keeping an eye out for other SF-influenced adaptations as I go along).
Don’t forget to watch that lovely Disney classic, The Sword in the Stone! To me, the one that sounds most interesting is To the Chapel Perilous. I once read a local history book about a murder with a potato masher, and the author noted articles from the papers at the time. They were so gossipy and not fact checked, so it was more like one of those “nosy neighbor” Facebook groups that are so popular. Perhaps that is what To the Chapel will be like?
Yes, I think To The Chapel Perilous sounds really interesting and I’m looking forward to reading it – especially since it’s 50s tabloids rather than today’s, so I’m interested to see how the tone differs.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen The Sword in the Stone! It’s not so beloved here as it is in the US. But I will give it a try!
Aww, it’s so lovely! Also, fun fact, the boy who voices Arthur (known as Wart) changed a few times for reasons you can Google. It makes the movie capture some of the weirdness of Disney’s early process for making animated films.
Ah, this looks so fun! I love a good Arthurian retelling and have been toying with the idea of putting together a focused tbr like this (not by decade though) for a while… you’re making me feel I still should! I’d so enjoy seeing your thoughts on all of these. My favorite Arthurian tale lately has been Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn trilogy (book 1 came out 2020), which is YA- not an age range I read often anymore but I did love this one even as an adult. It features a Black protagonist and (imo) is both loyal to and critical of traditional Arthurian beats in really interesting ways.
Avalon High was one of my first Arthurian retelling loves as a teen as well! I actually did reread it recently and loved it less but the nostalgia was there.
Hope you have a great time with your Arthurian list! 🙂
Thank you! And thanks for the recommendation – I would have skipped that because it has the TikTok label and that’s normally a sign that a book isn’t for me, but it does sound really interesting. I would be interested to hear what you put on your list if you come up with one!
Ah, I didn’t notice TikTok had got their hands on it, but I do think it’s worth the read anyway! I mostly avoid TT recommendations as well, but I think that community has expanded enough that sometimes a truly good book finds its way into the mix 🙂
The Buried Giant is probably my favourite Ishiguro, but I’m aware that I am in the minority here! I loved its walking pace, the ambiguity, the mystery. The love.
https://bronasbooks.com/2015/03/19/the-buried-giant-by-kazuo-ishiguro/