A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER

The name, Sir Lancelot, has a potency capable of conjuring many disparate images...

 

Maybe even something not quite so seriously heroic...

In 1940, during the first year of the Second World War, T H White published The Ill-Made Knight, his third book retelling the Arthurian myth and focusing on the character generally seen as the most noble, handsome and dashingly splendid of all the knights at King Arthur's fabled Round Table.

White's take on the heroic French knight was a radically revisionist one: accepting – as is told in many versions of the Arthur myth – that it was Lancelot's illicit love for the King's wife, Guenever that eventually initiated the destruction of Arthur's chivalric dream, the author sets out with the determination of a modern novelist, rather than a myth-maker, to explore the human complexities of the triangular relationship between the Knight, the King and the Queen.

The portrait that emerges is unusual: Lancelot is not the flower of manly beauty so often depicted, but an ill-graced, socially awkward, priggish character full of his own importance. The Ill-Made Knight of the title ('Chevalier mal fet') is not just ill-made in the sense of his ugly features but also in his perplexed relationships: his hero-worship of Arthur (with a suggestion of suppressed homoeroticism) resulting in an initial jealousy towards Guenever that makes their eventual tortured romance all the more weirdly inevitable.

The Ill-Made Knight was subsequently incorporated into T H White's one-volume compilation of his Arthurian romances, The Once and Future King and represents the basis for the fourth episode of my current Radio 4 dramatisation.

The BBC has recently posted a teaser introduction to the zealous young Lancelot (Alex Waldmann) from a scene where the would-be knight meets Merlyn (David Warner) and the old magician's enchantress bride, Nimue (Bettrys Jones). You can listen to it here.

You can hear the episode in full tomorrow, Sunday 30 November, on BBC Radio 4 at 3:00 pm and, again, on Saturday 6 December at 9:00 pm.

Earlier episodes are available on the BBC iPlayer but if you haven't caught up with the beginning of the saga, the clock is now ticking with just 17 days left to hear Episode 1: 'The Coming of Merlyn' before it magically disappears into the ether... Details of all the available episodes will be found here.

Also on air...

Tomorrow at 6:00 pm, BBC Radio 4 Extra are re-broadcasting another episode of Ray Bradbury's Tales of the Bizarre featuring my dramatisation of Ray's story, 'The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl', telling of a murder and the compulsive events that follow and which have such devastating consequences on the murderer...

I first read the story fifty years ago in the collection, The Golden Apples of the Sun, but it had originally been published in the November 1948 edition of Detective Book Magazine under the title 'Touch and Go'.

Introduced by the late Ray Bradbury, 'The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl' has a compelling central performance from Nigel Anthony as William Acton, the obsessed murderer. You will find a link to the transmission here and the Radio 4 Extra website also has details of all the earlier episodes, including two more of my dramatisations, Night Call Collect and The Jar.

GIVING THANKS

FOND GREETINGS 

to all my

AMERICAN FRIENDS

MAKE MINE MUSICAL!

The Sibley-scripted Radio 2 series, The Musical  (first broadcast in 2009) continues its repeat airing on BBC Radio 2 tonight with 'Something Borrowed'.

Presented by Whoppi Goldberg (who, at the time, was starring at the Palladium in the musical version of Sister Act), the programme explores stage musicals that have drawn their inspiration from plays and movies, among them Sunset Boulevard, Ghost and A Little Night Music...

The programme will be on iPlayer for thirty days, shortly after transmission.

And last week's episode, presented by theatre producer, Bill Kenwright, and examining shows that challenged what was and was not an acceptable subject for the stage musical is NOW available on iPlayer here...

THE WITCHING HOUR?

In 1939 T H White wrote a sequel to  The Sword in the Stone, his highly successful account of the boyhood of King Arthur. 

The Witch in the Wood (first American edition right) told the beginnings of the story of Gawain, Agravaine and Gareth, children of the rebellious King Lot of Orkney and Out Isles and his magic-meddling wife, Morgause – but in a literary style that would be unfamiliar to anyone who has only ever read The Once and Future King in its one-volume form.

As originally recounted, the story is high in comedic content with Morgause being portrayed as a somewhat ditzy vamp who sets her cap (or crown) at every prospective male she meets, including Sir Palomides, the Orkney boys' black tutor, and (from The Sword in the Stone) the comic knights, Sir Grummore Grummursum and King Pellinore, along with the latter's suddenly less than elusive Questing Beast.

When, in 1958, White gathered his Arthurian novels into one volume as The Once and Future King, The Witch in the Wood (first British edition left) underwent a drastic revision: much of the comedy was downplayed or eliminated, the plot was trimmed back to the bone and it was retitled 'The Queen of Air and Darkness' after a line from one of A E Housman's Last Poems...

Her strong enchantments failing, / Her towers of fear in wreck, /Her limbecks dried of poisons / And the knife at her neck, / The Queen of air and darkness / Begins to shrill and cry, / 'O young man, O my slayer, / To-morrow you shall die.' / O Queen of air and darkness, / I think 'tis truth you say, / And I shall die to-morrow; / But you will die to-day. 

It is White's later, more focused – and decidedly darker – version that I have drawn on for the third episode of the BBC dramatisation of The Once and Future King that can be heard this afternoon, on BBC Radio 4, at 3:00 pm and features the delicious Kate Fleetwood  as the sinister enchantress Morgause who turns her dark powers against the newly-crowned Arthur.

CLICK here for the trailer

Oh, yes... and this episode also includes a flashback to Arthur's childhood and his encounter with another witch (a character from The Sword in the Stone, but later excised from TO&FK) –– Madam Mim, who made such a memorable appearance in Walt Disney's 1963 telling of White's first Arthurian tale...

The above interpretation of Madam Mim's transformations during The Sword in the Stone's celebrated Wizard's Duel is by Joshua Mattes.

'The Queen of Air and Darkness' will be repeated next Saturday 29 November at 9:00 pm and, along with the first two episode, will be available on BBC iPlayer.

Also on air today...

BBC Radio 4 Extra are currently repeating Ray Bradbury's Tales of the Bizarre, a series I co-dramatised with Catherine Czerkawska back in 1995. Tonight at 6:00 pm you can hear my adaptation of the chilling story, 'The Jar'...

CLICK here to LISTEN

By the way, the BBC website not only fails to credit the dramatist (outrage!), rather more importantly it omits the fact that the play (as with all the tales in this series) was personally introduced by Ray Bradbury!

BEAR NECESSITIES

Somewhere around forty-five years ago, I began a correspondence with Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington, which led to a friendship than ran across several years, during which time I used to visit and stay with Michael and his family.

I always loved the Paddington books: the small domestic misadventures of the marmalade-loving bear from Darkest Peru (each a single chapter in length) are perfectly pitched so as to engage and amuse the young listener (always allowing the child to be one jump ahead of the muddles blundered into by the accident prone Paddington) while providing plenty of good story-telling opportunities for the adult called upon to turn the pages!

Michael was always a generous encourager of my youthful ambitions to be a writer, but over the passing years, we eventually lost touch – until this week, when I had the opportunity of visiting my old friend and mentor to talk to him about his latest book – Love from Paddington – for tonight's Radio 2 Arts Show.

Paddington – famous for his polite manners, his ability to handle difficult situations with determination and difficult people by the use of one of his celebrated 'hard stares' – made his debut in A Bear  Called Paddington in 1958.

Although many other volumes followed, the new book is the first to be told in Paddington's own words – as he chronicles his exploits in a series of letters written from his home with the Brown of 32 Windsor Gardens to his Aunt Lucy who lives in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima...

With Love from Paddington is a nostalgic trip back to some of the young bear's most engaging escapades illustrated with a combination of pictures by Paddington's first artist, Peggy Fortnum and his current illustrator, R W Alley

You can hear my interview at 10:00 pm on the Radio 2 Arts Show with Suzy Klein sitting in for Claudia Winkleman.

WHOSO PULLETH OUT THIS SWORD...

Fifty-one years ago, next month, the young Sibley was sitting on the edge of his seat in the Odeon cinema, Bromley waiting for the latest Walt Disney animated feature film to begin. 

The movie I was so eagerly waiting was entitled...

...and it opened (as had so many earlier Disney classics) with a book...

The legend Disney had inscribed on the hilt of that sword in that anvil on that stone was a direct quote from the volume on which the film was based, T H White's 1938 novel The Sword in the Stone. But, beyond that, it referred back to a book published by Caxton in 1485 – Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur...

Then stood the realm in great jeopardy long while, for every lord that was mighty of men made him strong, and many weened to have been king. Then Merlin went to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and counselled him for to send for all the lords of the realm, and all the gentlemen of arms, that they should to London come by Christmas, upon pain of cursing; and for this cause, that Jesus, that was born on that night, that he would of his great mercy show some miracle, as he was come to be king of mankind, for to show some miracle who should be rightwise king of this realm... 

And when matins and the first mass was done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone; and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus:-Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England. 

The iconic moment in the ancient legends when young Arthur succeeds where countless others have failed in drawing the sword free of the anvil and stone has been visualised in many ways across the centuries...

...through to the climactic moment in that Disney movie...

I'm mentioning all this because 'The Sword in the Stone' is the title of the second episode of my new BBC radio dramtisation of T H White's cycle of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King broadcast tomorrow, Sunday 16 November at 3:00 pm (repeated Saturday 22 November at 11:00 pm and on iPlayer for 30 days after transmission). 

As a teaser here's young Wart (Edward Bracey) with a little encouragement from Merlyn's owl, Archimedes (Bruce Alexander), doing the legendary deed that will change his life – and mythology! – for ever!

Click HERE to Listen

Meanwhile, if you've not yet caught up with Episode 1, 'The Coming of Merlyn', you've still time to do so here.

The Once and Future King stars Paul Ready as Arthur and David Warner as Merlyn...

 ...and you can listen to them and other cast members (and the dramatist!) talking about the six-part series, here – as well as the behind the scenes secrets of a walking, talking mustard pot!

Many of the images above can be found (together with details of the artists responsible for them)  on The University of Rochester's Camelot Project.

WHITER THAN WHITE

There's more to T H White's The Once and Future King than at first meets the eye... 

The bulky, 800-page book that you will find in most bookshops is, in fact, five books written across more than twenty years and only published in their entirety forty years after the author first started writing his epic...

I tell the saga of the making of the saga here – on the BBC Radio 4 Blog.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Goodness, but it's been a long time coming...

A truly Once and Future project...

ONCE – fifty years ago – a young lad read a book entitled The Sword in the Stone...

As he turned the pages, he fell instantly in love with this quirkily magical version of the age-old legend of King Arthur as he had never heard it told before.

Having got to the last page of a book he didn't want to end, he was thrilled to find that there was still more to the story –– three more books of it in fact, in one giant volume called The Once and Future King...

Fast forward half a century into the FUTURE...


The same young lad – now a venerable old man – has taken that book and turned it into a six-part radio series for the BBC...

T H White's fantasy classic, The Once and Future King was also the inspiration for both Camelot, the 1960 Broadway musical by My Fair Lady's Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and the 1963 Walt Disney animated film, The Sword in the Stone.

The new radio dramatisation – debuting on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 9 November at 3:00 pm (and repeated on Saturday 15 November at 9:00 pm – follows Arthur's story from his boyhood as an adopted orphan to his miraculous revelation as 'Rightwise King of All England' to the creation of the Round Table and its eventual collapse in  ruins as a result of forbidden love, hatred, deceit and revenge.

To provide a framework for the telling of the tale, I turned to a fifth volume: the posthumously published The Book of Merlyn in which – on the eve of King Arthur's final battle with his bastard son, Mordred – his childhood tutor,  the enchanter Merlyn, returns to give the beleaguered monarch a final understanding of the past and a glimpse of the future...

Starring as Merlyn in The Once and Future King is David Warner...

...an actor who was not only the Hamlet of his generation but also Henry VI in The War of the Roses cycle before going on to a film and television career in which he has given dozens of unforgettable performances: as the eponymous Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment and, among many films, Time After Time, The Omen, Tron, Time Bandits, A Christmas Carol, Cross of Iron and, more recently, with Kenneth Branagh in the TV series, Wallender.

David also played Lord Sepulchrave in my 1985 Sony Award-winning radio plays, Titus Groan and Gormenghast and – returning to the fantasy realms of Mervyn Peake – as the Artist in The History of Titus Groan that won me a BBC Audio Drama Award and which is available to purchase as a download here.

Also heading the cast are Paul Ready as King Arthur, Lyndsey Marshal as Queen Guenever and Alex Waldman as Lancelot...

You can discover more about the series including photos and interviews with myself and members of the cast on BBC Radio's The Once and Future King website page.

Why not take a trip to Camelot – it's really quite magical!

LIFE-LIKE

The second part of my 2010 eight-part radio series on The Musical is now available via the BBC's iPlayer. Daniel Evans (who starred in the London production of Stephen Sondheim's musical, Sunday in the Park with George) presents 'Drawn from Life', focusing on legendary musicals that – like Sunday in the Park, Gypsy and Evita – are based on the lives of real people.

As you can see below, the programme has an impressive supporting cast!

To listen again (for the next four weeks) click here