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The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend
Acclaimed biographer Peter Ackroyd vibrantly resurrects the legendary epic of Camelot in this modern adaptation.
The names of Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad, the sword of Excalibur, and the court of Camelot are as recognizable as any from the world of myth. Although many versions exist of the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, 'Le Morte d'Arthur' by Sir Thomas Malory endures as the most moving and richly inventive.
In this abridged retelling the inimitable Peter Ackroyd transforms Malory's fifteenth-century work into a dramatic modern story, vividly bringing to life a world of courage and chivalry, magic, and majesty. The golden age of Camelot, the perilous search for the Holy Grail, the love of Guinevere and Lancelot, and the treachery of Arthur's son Mordred are all rendered into contemporary prose with Ackroyd's characteristic charm and panache. Just as he did with his fresh new version of Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales', Ackroyd now brings one of the cornerstones of English literature to a whole new audience.
The names of Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad, the sword of Excalibur, and the court of Camelot are as recognizable as any from the world of myth. Although many versions exist of the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, 'Le Morte d'Arthur' by Sir Thomas Malory endures as the most moving and richly inventive.
In this abridged retelling the inimitable Peter Ackroyd transforms Malory's fifteenth-century work into a dramatic modern story, vividly bringing to life a world of courage and chivalry, magic, and majesty. The golden age of Camelot, the perilous search for the Holy Grail, the love of Guinevere and Lancelot, and the treachery of Arthur's son Mordred are all rendered into contemporary prose with Ackroyd's characteristic charm and panache. Just as he did with his fresh new version of Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales', Ackroyd now brings one of the cornerstones of English literature to a whole new audience.
336 pages, Paperback
Published October 30, 2012
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About the author
Peter Ackroyd
184 books1,494 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
December 20, 2011
I wanted so much to enjoy this book. I hesitate to say 'love this book', because I'm not an Ackroyd fan, but the subject matter here - I am a die-hard Arthur groupie - should have made this an easy win.
However. I found Ackroyd's retelling flatfooted, emotionless, and barren. Stripped back prose I might have admired, but here we get stripped back storytelling.
The King Arthur story has been a massive part of my imaginative life since I was little. My first introduction, I think, was Roger Lancelyn Green's 'King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table'. I still have a copy of the book, and have dipped into it frequently. [Green added the story of Sir Gawaine and the Loathsome Lady to the Arthurian repertoire, and it's one of my favourite fables of all time; it and Kipling's 'White Seal'.]
Green keeps the archaic language (hithers and thithers and thees and thous) which I found incredibly romantic as a kid. He gives a sense of the destiny that drives the Arthurian story - Arthur is a flawed man in a flawed world, trying to do the right thing, fated to fail. It's also a story of adventure and magic, quests and chivalrous acts.
From Green I moved on to T.H. White - first 'The Sword in the Stone' as a kid, and then 'The Once and Future King' when I was in my teens. Whatever moral compass I have, I owe mostly to White. Some may find him verbose and cheesy - I find 'The Sword in the Stone' to be one of the most fine, most pure, most gently lovely things ever written. It also introduced me - through Merlin's backwards-through-time life - to irony and and a kind of proto-postmodern humour; adult humour.
'The Once and Future King' takes us from a funny, thoughtful, educational story to a full-blown tragedy. The triangle between Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur drives the story, and what I have always loved about this version is that White tries to turn the three into real people, not ciphers. You sympathise with all three, and every time I draw near the end of their story, the tears come rolling down.
In my first year of university, I decided it was time to buy a copy of the daddy of them all, Malory's Morte d'Arthur. I've never even attempted to read it cover to cover - I dip into and out of it, visiting the stories I picked up through Green and White. And I love the lushness of the language - I don't bother to try to follow the narrative, I just soak in the words. It is a Romance, consistent with all that that means - a meditation on courtly love, chivalry, kingship, nobility, a set of lessons for listeners couched as entertainment.
So what does that leave Ackroyd? The problem is, when you strip away Malory's language but don't add any - for the lack of a better word - psychology, you don't have romance and you don't have any reason for the actions. You don't love anyone, and you don't fear for them. You don't have that sadness of history - that sense of experiencing a long-ago loss - that Adam Gopnik recently identified as a key aspect of chidren's love of fantasy:
Instead, Ackroyd left me dissatisfied, with a one-dimensional set of stories and no sympathy.
How to explain? Let's try this. Arthur is the son of Igraine, wife of the Earl of Cornwall, and Uther Pendragon, King of England. Uther fell for Igraine when she and her husband Gorlois visited his court, but when he tried to force himself upon her they fled for their castle. Uther, maddened for her, marched on Cornwall with an great army; Gorlois hid Igraine away in Castle Tintagel, and went himself to Caste Terribel, where Uther besieged him. Though many skirmishes were fought and many man killed, Uther came no closer to Igraine, and, as Malory puts it, 'for pure anger and great love of fair Igraine the King Uther fell sick'. One of Uther's knights went forth to seek Merlin to save the king, and in return for securing Uther's agreement that he would receive any one thing he asked for, Merlin agreed to get him into Igraine's bed.
Merlin conjured Uther into the likeness of Gorlois, and himself and one of Uther's knights into the guise of Gorlois's closest companions. When Gorlois rode forth to attack Uther's armies, Merlin smuggled the king into Igraine's bed, where Arthur was conceived. Uther left Igraine, and hours later she learned her husband had been killed in battle - bewildered and grieved, she kept her puzzlement over his seeming visit to herself. Within thirteen days Uther had secured the agreement of the nobles of England that Gorlois's widow should become his wife.
How then, to reconcile Arthur's seeming bastard birth with the legend? Here's how the four writers manage it.
Green elides the topic somewhat (fittingly, I guess, for someone writing for children in the 1950s):
Malory tidies the ends up so that Igraine becomes a heroine, and not an exploited and betrayed woman:
Here's Ackroyd:
God, I hate that use of 'offspring'. The two passages are nearly the same, but I find Ackroyd's so charmless.
'The Sword in the Stone' doesn't explain Arthur's origins at all. The task of explaining this falls to four small boys - the brothers who would become Arthur's knights Gawaine, Gaheris and Gareth, and the traitorous Agravaine - huddled together in a draughty tower, telling each other a well-worn family story.
One of the things that fascinated me, reading back over the different versions of this chapter, was that White's retelling takes Malory's words and inserts into the children's story verbatim:
Call me a romantic, but for me, White will always best convey the heart of Malory's tale. Sure, he brings a Tolkienesque dying-of-the-days to it, a note that Ackroyd strips out. But Ackroyd also takes all the emotional heft out of the story, and doesn't replace it with anything. I wish it was otherwise - I'm sure others will react differently to me - but, well, THWHITE4EVA.
[I drafted this review in my email. When I got to Goodreads, this was the final sentence of the very short description of the book: "This title presents readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table." I could have saved some typing ...]
However. I found Ackroyd's retelling flatfooted, emotionless, and barren. Stripped back prose I might have admired, but here we get stripped back storytelling.
The King Arthur story has been a massive part of my imaginative life since I was little. My first introduction, I think, was Roger Lancelyn Green's 'King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table'. I still have a copy of the book, and have dipped into it frequently. [Green added the story of Sir Gawaine and the Loathsome Lady to the Arthurian repertoire, and it's one of my favourite fables of all time; it and Kipling's 'White Seal'.]
Green keeps the archaic language (hithers and thithers and thees and thous) which I found incredibly romantic as a kid. He gives a sense of the destiny that drives the Arthurian story - Arthur is a flawed man in a flawed world, trying to do the right thing, fated to fail. It's also a story of adventure and magic, quests and chivalrous acts.
From Green I moved on to T.H. White - first 'The Sword in the Stone' as a kid, and then 'The Once and Future King' when I was in my teens. Whatever moral compass I have, I owe mostly to White. Some may find him verbose and cheesy - I find 'The Sword in the Stone' to be one of the most fine, most pure, most gently lovely things ever written. It also introduced me - through Merlin's backwards-through-time life - to irony and and a kind of proto-postmodern humour; adult humour.
'The Once and Future King' takes us from a funny, thoughtful, educational story to a full-blown tragedy. The triangle between Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur drives the story, and what I have always loved about this version is that White tries to turn the three into real people, not ciphers. You sympathise with all three, and every time I draw near the end of their story, the tears come rolling down.
In my first year of university, I decided it was time to buy a copy of the daddy of them all, Malory's Morte d'Arthur. I've never even attempted to read it cover to cover - I dip into and out of it, visiting the stories I picked up through Green and White. And I love the lushness of the language - I don't bother to try to follow the narrative, I just soak in the words. It is a Romance, consistent with all that that means - a meditation on courtly love, chivalry, kingship, nobility, a set of lessons for listeners couched as entertainment.
So what does that leave Ackroyd? The problem is, when you strip away Malory's language but don't add any - for the lack of a better word - psychology, you don't have romance and you don't have any reason for the actions. You don't love anyone, and you don't fear for them. You don't have that sadness of history - that sense of experiencing a long-ago loss - that Adam Gopnik recently identified as a key aspect of chidren's love of fantasy:
What substitutes for psychology in Tolkien and his followers, and keeps the stories from seeming barrenly external, is what preceded psychology in epic literature: an overwhelming sense of history and, with it, a sense of loss. The constant evocation of lost or fading glory—Númenor has fallen, the elves are leaving Middle-earth—does the emotional work that mixed-up minds do in realist fiction. We know that Westernesse is lost even before we know what the hell Westernesse was, and our feeling for its loss lends dimension to those who have lost it.
Instead, Ackroyd left me dissatisfied, with a one-dimensional set of stories and no sympathy.
How to explain? Let's try this. Arthur is the son of Igraine, wife of the Earl of Cornwall, and Uther Pendragon, King of England. Uther fell for Igraine when she and her husband Gorlois visited his court, but when he tried to force himself upon her they fled for their castle. Uther, maddened for her, marched on Cornwall with an great army; Gorlois hid Igraine away in Castle Tintagel, and went himself to Caste Terribel, where Uther besieged him. Though many skirmishes were fought and many man killed, Uther came no closer to Igraine, and, as Malory puts it, 'for pure anger and great love of fair Igraine the King Uther fell sick'. One of Uther's knights went forth to seek Merlin to save the king, and in return for securing Uther's agreement that he would receive any one thing he asked for, Merlin agreed to get him into Igraine's bed.
Merlin conjured Uther into the likeness of Gorlois, and himself and one of Uther's knights into the guise of Gorlois's closest companions. When Gorlois rode forth to attack Uther's armies, Merlin smuggled the king into Igraine's bed, where Arthur was conceived. Uther left Igraine, and hours later she learned her husband had been killed in battle - bewildered and grieved, she kept her puzzlement over his seeming visit to herself. Within thirteen days Uther had secured the agreement of the nobles of England that Gorlois's widow should become his wife.
How then, to reconcile Arthur's seeming bastard birth with the legend? Here's how the four writers manage it.
Green elides the topic somewhat (fittingly, I guess, for someone writing for children in the 1950s):
...Uther fell in love with Gorlois's wife, the lovely Igrayne, and there was a battle between them, until Gorlois fell, and Uther married his widow.
He visited her first in the haunted castle of Tintagel, the dark castle by the Cornish sea, and Merlin the enchanter watched over their love. One child was born to Uther and Igrayne - but what became of that baby boy only the wise Arthur could have told, for he carried it away by a secret path down the cliff side in the dead of night, and no word was spoken of its fate.
Malory tidies the ends up so that Igraine becomes a heroine, and not an exploited and betrayed woman:
The Queen Igraine waxed daily greater and greater, so it befell after within half a year, as King Uther lay by his uqeen, he asked her, by the faith she owed to him, whose was the child within her body; then she was sore abashed to give the answer. Dismay you not, said the king, but tell me the truth, and I shall love you the better, by the faith of my body. Sir, said she, I shall tell you the truth. The same night that my lord was dead, the hour of his death, as his knights record, there came to my castle of Tintagil a man like my lord in speech and in countenance, and two knights with him in likeness to his two knights Brastias and Jordans, and so I went unto bed with him as I ought to do with my lord, and the same night, as I shall answer unto God, this child was begotten upon me. That is the truth, said the king, as ye say; for it was I myself that came in the likeness, and therefore dismay you not, for I am the father of the child; and there he told her all the cause, how it was by Merlin's counsel. Then the queen made great joy when she knew who was the father of her child.
Here's Ackroyd:
Day by day Igraine grew greater with child. Uther lay with her one night and asked her, on the faith she owed to him, whose offspring it was. She was too ashamed to answer. 'Do not be dismayed,' he told her. 'Tell me the truth, I shall love you all the more for your honesty.'
'I will speak the truth to you, my lord. On the night that my husband died a stranger came to Tintagel in his shape; he had the same speech, and the same countenance,as the duke. There were two companions with him, who I thought to be Sir Brastias and Sir Jordans. So I was deceived. I did my duty, and lay beside him in our bed. I swear to God that, on that same night, this child was conceived.'
'I know, sweet wife, that you are speaking the truth. It was I who came to the castle. I entered your bed. I am the father of this child.' Then he told her of the magic of Merlin, and she marvelled at it. But she was overjoyed, too, that Uther Pendragon was the sire of her offspring.
God, I hate that use of 'offspring'. The two passages are nearly the same, but I find Ackroyd's so charmless.
'The Sword in the Stone' doesn't explain Arthur's origins at all. The task of explaining this falls to four small boys - the brothers who would become Arthur's knights Gawaine, Gaheris and Gareth, and the traitorous Agravaine - huddled together in a draughty tower, telling each other a well-worn family story.
"So when our Grandfather and Granny were winning the sieges, and it looked as if King Uther would be utterly defeated, there came along a wicked magician called Merlyn --"
"A nigromancer," said Gareth.
"And this nigromancer, would you believe it, by means of his infernal arts, succeeded in putting the treacherous Uther Pendragon inside our Granny's Castle. Granda immediately made a sortie out of Terrabil, but he was slain in the battle --"
"Treacherously."
"And the poor Countess of Cornwall --"
"The chaste and beautiful Igraine --"
"Our Granny --"
"-- was captured prisoner by the blackhearted, southron, faithless King of the Dragon and then, in spite of it that she had three beautiful daughters already whatever --"
"The lovely Cornwall Sisters."
"Aunt Elaine."
"Aunt Morgan.'
"And Mammy."
"And if she had these lovely daughters, she was forced into marrying the King of England - the man who had slain her husband!"
They considered the enormous English wickedness in silence, overwhelmed by its denouement. It was their mother's favourite story, on the rare occasions when she troubled to tell them one, and they had learned it by heart.
One of the things that fascinated me, reading back over the different versions of this chapter, was that White's retelling takes Malory's words and inserts into the children's story verbatim:
"The chaste and beautiful Countess of Cornwall," resumed Gawaine, "spurned the advances of King Uther Pendragon, and she told our Grandfather about it. She said: 'I suppose we were sent for you that I should be dishonoured. Wherefore, husband, I counsel you that we depart from hence suddenly, that we may ride all night to our own castle."
Call me a romantic, but for me, White will always best convey the heart of Malory's tale. Sure, he brings a Tolkienesque dying-of-the-days to it, a note that Ackroyd strips out. But Ackroyd also takes all the emotional heft out of the story, and doesn't replace it with anything. I wish it was otherwise - I'm sure others will react differently to me - but, well, THWHITE4EVA.
[I drafted this review in my email. When I got to Goodreads, this was the final sentence of the very short description of the book: "This title presents readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table." I could have saved some typing ...]
July 30, 2014
This was my first sally forth into the Arthurian legend and it was absorbing, surprising, and absolutely lovable. This is a very different picture of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table than I got from Disney's The Sword and the Stone. For one thing, it is much, much darker. Arthur is a very Oedipal character, going to extreme lengths (e.g. drowning a shipful of infants) to avoid Merlin's prophecy that he would be murdered. Fun fact: did you know that Excalibur was not the sword that Arthur pulled from the stone? Nope, the sword from the stone broke after a bit and he just threw it away. Excalibur was a sword that was offered up to him from an arm that came out of a mysterious lake.
It's a fount of delightfully messed up characters. There's the aforementioned Arthur, the star although he is in the background of most of the book, playing second fiddle to some of the more active noble knights. His most beloved knight Lancelot, who (in a very unchivalric manner) spends years cuckolding the king. Arthur's sister, the powerful sorceress Morgan le Fay, who serves as this universe's mischievous Loki. She buried Merlin alive with spells; as far as I can tell, he's still somewhere in the belly of the earth, subsisting on earthworms. Sir Brewnour, a colorful antagonist who established teh custom of dueling to the death every man who visits his castle and killing every woman who is less beautiful than his own wife.
Of course, it all ends tragically and nearly every character meets an unhappy end. And that's all just part of the fun. I can't wait to delve deeper into the Arthurian world.
A note on this edition: This is a "retelling" of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table by Peter Ackroyd and by the look of the other reviews of this book, it's not even a great one. The naysayers posit that Ackroyd made the legend seem bland. I found it anything but bland. If I were to do it over again, I'd probably start with a different book, probably Malory or White'sThe Once and Future King or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But as it is, I am very pleased with this book.
It's a fount of delightfully messed up characters. There's the aforementioned Arthur, the star although he is in the background of most of the book, playing second fiddle to some of the more active noble knights. His most beloved knight Lancelot, who (in a very unchivalric manner) spends years cuckolding the king. Arthur's sister, the powerful sorceress Morgan le Fay, who serves as this universe's mischievous Loki. She buried Merlin alive with spells; as far as I can tell, he's still somewhere in the belly of the earth, subsisting on earthworms. Sir Brewnour, a colorful antagonist who established teh custom of dueling to the death every man who visits his castle and killing every woman who is less beautiful than his own wife.
Of course, it all ends tragically and nearly every character meets an unhappy end. And that's all just part of the fun. I can't wait to delve deeper into the Arthurian world.
A note on this edition: This is a "retelling" of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table by Peter Ackroyd and by the look of the other reviews of this book, it's not even a great one. The naysayers posit that Ackroyd made the legend seem bland. I found it anything but bland. If I were to do it over again, I'd probably start with a different book, probably Malory or White'sThe Once and Future King or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But as it is, I am very pleased with this book.
July 2, 2023
As a lover of Arthurian legends, I had high hopes for this one, but unfortunately, the writing style proved to be exceptionally dry and made the reading experience quite unpleasant.
The story lacked the enchantment and magic that usually accompanies Arthurian tales. Ackroyd's writing resulted in a detached and unengaging narrative. The lack of vibrant descriptions and emotional depth made it challenging to connect with the story or feel invested in the characters.
Moreover, the prose felt laborious to navigate. The dryness of the writing style made it a struggle to progress through the book, causing the reading experience to become more of a chore than an enjoyable journey.
The story lacked the enchantment and magic that usually accompanies Arthurian tales. Ackroyd's writing resulted in a detached and unengaging narrative. The lack of vibrant descriptions and emotional depth made it challenging to connect with the story or feel invested in the characters.
Moreover, the prose felt laborious to navigate. The dryness of the writing style made it a struggle to progress through the book, causing the reading experience to become more of a chore than an enjoyable journey.
October 19, 2017
Really old stories tug on your suspension of disbelief in a way that probably bugs modern readers more than it bugged readers of the time, but this reselling of Malory manages to capture what appeals to people even now about Arthurian legend. It's cool to get swept up in a story that's so old.
November 21, 2010
I’ve been a huge fan of the Arthurian legends since childhood, I read Malory’s Morte d’Arthur till it literately fell apart. I’m also a fan of Peter Ackroyd - his books on London, Dickens and Blake are memorable in bringing their subjects so vividly to life - so The Death of King Arthur was doubly disappointing to me. Malory’s stories are already so well-known, I was expecting an imaginative, inventive re-telling, something more like Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, but this was a stodgy, stolid translation rather than an interpretation, a Malory with all the magic beaten out.
September 30, 2025
modern retelling of Mallory's La morte d'Arthur found it interesting
February 24, 2011
Peter Ackroyd's retelling of Malory's tales purports to be a modernisation, a revivification, even. I don't think it really achieves its goals. Flawed as Malory's work is, to the modern reader at least, I think there's a passion there and a meaning that slips through Ackroyd's fingers. He cuts liberally from the text, so that it certainly doesn't hold the richness of Malory -- if you're looking for something simplified, abridged, I might even venture to say dumbed down, then Peter Ackroyd's retelling might save you the long (but rewarding, in my opinion) job of reading Malory's original text. On the other hand, I don't think it adequately captures the original text, so perhaps you'd be better reading one of the countless modern retellings, or one of the more dynamic texts in translation (Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is fun) -- Malory's work was itself a retelling, after all.
I didn't find it enthralling, as you can tell. I didn't find it -- here, let's find some quotations from the blurb and such -- a 'magical and moving evocation of humanity's endless search for perfection, nor did I find it a 'dramatic modern story', or that it brought 'new life' to the story for our times.
One thing I did appreciate was that the introduction and even the dust jacket acknowledge that Malory was no paragon of virtue (how ironic that he wrote about chivalry and the finest knights in the world).
While this review seems fairly scathing, I didn't hate the book, either. I simply found it completely unremarkable.
I think I might start rereading Malory, now...
Wait. The GR blurb says, 'This title presents readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table.' Readable, yes. That's about the most positive I can be about it, too.
I didn't find it enthralling, as you can tell. I didn't find it -- here, let's find some quotations from the blurb and such -- a 'magical and moving evocation of humanity's endless search for perfection, nor did I find it a 'dramatic modern story', or that it brought 'new life' to the story for our times.
One thing I did appreciate was that the introduction and even the dust jacket acknowledge that Malory was no paragon of virtue (how ironic that he wrote about chivalry and the finest knights in the world).
While this review seems fairly scathing, I didn't hate the book, either. I simply found it completely unremarkable.
I think I might start rereading Malory, now...
Wait. The GR blurb says, 'This title presents readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table.' Readable, yes. That's about the most positive I can be about it, too.
July 21, 2011
Not so much a retelling of the Arthurian legends, more a new translation and abridgement. Ackroyd has taken Malory's text and retold it in the modern idiom, along the way removing much of the contradictions and superfluous descriptions of battles that clog up the original text. However by doing so he has lost some of the poetry of the language. To be honest the first part of the book is a bit of a slog and it is only when the Quest for the Grail begins that things take off we are carried along to the inevitable doomed conclusion to the story. Much of it reads like notes for a fuller retelling of the legends, or a simplified version for 'young adults'. This is not to detract from Ackroyd's achievement; he is to be applauded for keeping the legends alive and if people go on to tackle Malory's original text that can only be a good thing. Personally I prefer my Arthurian reading to be a bit fuller and I'd recommend Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalaon (but not the sequel/prequels) and T.H. White's The Once and Future King to those who seek a reinterpretation of these classic doomed romances.
May 12, 2016
Mucho mejor que la versión de Lang.
Me faltaría leer el original de Malory (Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table), después ir más atrás, y animarme con los romances de Chrétien de Troyes.
Algún día...
Me faltaría leer el original de Malory (Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table), después ir más atrás, y animarme con los romances de Chrétien de Troyes.
Algún día...
March 23, 2011
Does the world need a new retelling of the Arthurian saga? Particularly one that, and forgive me for this, feels so dumbed-down?
I have read many of Ackroyd's non-fiction books and I have always been very impressed with him as a writer, but I couldn't help but be disappointed with this. It smacks of those 'modern' revisions of the Bible, where it may be more 'accessible' (and how I hate that word in connection with literature) but much of the beauty and majesty of the language is lost. This book left me cold, alas.
This is marketed as a new translation of Malory, but if Ackroyd has changed so much of the language to make it 'accessible' and eliminated much that he feels is extraneous, is it really Malory at all? Isn't it just Ackroyd's own take on the legend?
I might give this to a child to read, but it's not for adults, in my mind, and if I'm honest, if I was recommending an Arthurian tale to a child I'd usher them in the direction of T.H. White.
I have read many of Ackroyd's non-fiction books and I have always been very impressed with him as a writer, but I couldn't help but be disappointed with this. It smacks of those 'modern' revisions of the Bible, where it may be more 'accessible' (and how I hate that word in connection with literature) but much of the beauty and majesty of the language is lost. This book left me cold, alas.
This is marketed as a new translation of Malory, but if Ackroyd has changed so much of the language to make it 'accessible' and eliminated much that he feels is extraneous, is it really Malory at all? Isn't it just Ackroyd's own take on the legend?
I might give this to a child to read, but it's not for adults, in my mind, and if I'm honest, if I was recommending an Arthurian tale to a child I'd usher them in the direction of T.H. White.
January 30, 2020
This is one of the many works that is referenced in art and poetry, which I’ve been meaning to read to furnish my understandings of those works better.
I’d kind of heard of King Arthur but until now I’ve never made the connection to Guinevere, Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain, Merlin, Tristram, Isolde, connection to Christianity and the Holy Grail. This is a modern retell of Malory’s text (thought to be first published in 1485), which is available in two volumes on Gutenberg and written in Old English, making this Ackroyd’s retell an easier read.
Before reading this, I did compare the two. Ackroyd’s book has 6 main chapters headings, where 5 are divided further with snappy sub-headings to find that story easily. Malory’s 2 volumes are divided into 21 Books, which are further divided into chapters with long headings that describe the story to come. In comparing these, overall, I got the sense that Ackroyd covered all the important parts of the tale. His book is considerably shorter; I can only guess that his modern retell had trimmed out all the extra quests the knights venture on. Maybe Ackroyd thought it was enough to say that this happened by a quick mention rather than describing it in depth. I didn’t feel I had lost anything for this, as I still managed to come away with a clear grasp of the duty and honour the knights live by, and also Ackroyd’s retell showed me clearly how love and romance operates differently in King Arthur’s world. I came to this realisation without needing to look anything up or read about it.
When I finished, I was given a distinct impression that this was a moral tale by how Sir Lancelot does not achieve his quest of the Holy Grail. It also a tragic tale in how the love Lancelot and Guinevere have brings down the fellowship of the round table, the end of Arthur’s reign and Camelot. I’m not sure if reading Malory’s tale would have given me this same understanding to see the difference it has made when I now look at art works that give a nod to this story. This year I intend to read other stories around the myth of King Arthur and now feel more confident that I can do this.
I’d kind of heard of King Arthur but until now I’ve never made the connection to Guinevere, Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain, Merlin, Tristram, Isolde, connection to Christianity and the Holy Grail. This is a modern retell of Malory’s text (thought to be first published in 1485), which is available in two volumes on Gutenberg and written in Old English, making this Ackroyd’s retell an easier read.
Before reading this, I did compare the two. Ackroyd’s book has 6 main chapters headings, where 5 are divided further with snappy sub-headings to find that story easily. Malory’s 2 volumes are divided into 21 Books, which are further divided into chapters with long headings that describe the story to come. In comparing these, overall, I got the sense that Ackroyd covered all the important parts of the tale. His book is considerably shorter; I can only guess that his modern retell had trimmed out all the extra quests the knights venture on. Maybe Ackroyd thought it was enough to say that this happened by a quick mention rather than describing it in depth. I didn’t feel I had lost anything for this, as I still managed to come away with a clear grasp of the duty and honour the knights live by, and also Ackroyd’s retell showed me clearly how love and romance operates differently in King Arthur’s world. I came to this realisation without needing to look anything up or read about it.
When I finished, I was given a distinct impression that this was a moral tale by how Sir Lancelot does not achieve his quest of the Holy Grail. It also a tragic tale in how the love Lancelot and Guinevere have brings down the fellowship of the round table, the end of Arthur’s reign and Camelot. I’m not sure if reading Malory’s tale would have given me this same understanding to see the difference it has made when I now look at art works that give a nod to this story. This year I intend to read other stories around the myth of King Arthur and now feel more confident that I can do this.
November 6, 2016
I can't count myself in the ranks of fans for King Arthur stories. They should be exciting or adventurous (even though I have never read the originals), but instead they seemed rendered dull by this version. This thing is over 300 pages & the plot line pretty much repeats every three pages or so. I guess that makes it about 100 times I read a similar scenario over & over & over.... It becomes rather mind-numbing after a point.
A slog, but as a good knight (or lady), I stayed the course, fought the battle, & have emerged on the other side. Not sure if I made it through the reading battle scathed or unscathed....
Good luck, dear reader!
A slog, but as a good knight (or lady), I stayed the course, fought the battle, & have emerged on the other side. Not sure if I made it through the reading battle scathed or unscathed....
Good luck, dear reader!
November 11, 2016
I will also do a video review here at my channel: http://www.youtube.com/magicofbooks
I don't have too much to really say about this book. I've already previously read "Le Morte D'Arthur" by Thomas Mallory in it's original Middle English for a college course on Arthurian legend. I mostly picked up this book simply for the beautiful cover (so shiny!), and I also wanted to just read a contemporary translation, which the cover is advertising as "a retelling by Peter Ackroyd." I think Peter Ackroyd did an okay job here with his translation. I'll quote a bit from how he decided to translate this book:
"I have tried by best to convert Malory's sonorous and exhilarating prose into a more contemporary idiom; this is a loose, rather than punctilious translation. I have also chosen to abbreviate the narrative in pursuit of clarity and simplicity. [...] Malory is often rambling and repetitive; much that would have amused and interested a medieval audience will not appeal to a modern readership. I have also amended Malory's inconsistencies."
I think Ackroyd, for the most part, achieved his goal, because his translation does make for a smoother read and cuts out a lot of the fat and repetition. My problem with his translation is that oftentimes I felt like the story and characters were over the top and melodramtic, something I don't remember from reading the original Middle English text. Seriously, I found myself laughing on quite a few occasions when I don't think I was supposed to be laughing. Let's put it this way, if you've seen "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," you can see what that movie was parodying, and that's how I felt reading this translation, that it almost felt like a parody. And I don't think that was Ackroyd's intention for it to come across as amusing.
Overall, I do think this is a fine translation for a modern day audience if you are someone wanting to get into Arthurian legend and you don't want to spend forever trying to translate the French or Middle English originals. I appreciated what Ackroyd was trying to do with the text because he certainly cut out a lot of things that were unneeded.
I don't have too much to really say about this book. I've already previously read "Le Morte D'Arthur" by Thomas Mallory in it's original Middle English for a college course on Arthurian legend. I mostly picked up this book simply for the beautiful cover (so shiny!), and I also wanted to just read a contemporary translation, which the cover is advertising as "a retelling by Peter Ackroyd." I think Peter Ackroyd did an okay job here with his translation. I'll quote a bit from how he decided to translate this book:
"I have tried by best to convert Malory's sonorous and exhilarating prose into a more contemporary idiom; this is a loose, rather than punctilious translation. I have also chosen to abbreviate the narrative in pursuit of clarity and simplicity. [...] Malory is often rambling and repetitive; much that would have amused and interested a medieval audience will not appeal to a modern readership. I have also amended Malory's inconsistencies."
I think Ackroyd, for the most part, achieved his goal, because his translation does make for a smoother read and cuts out a lot of the fat and repetition. My problem with his translation is that oftentimes I felt like the story and characters were over the top and melodramtic, something I don't remember from reading the original Middle English text. Seriously, I found myself laughing on quite a few occasions when I don't think I was supposed to be laughing. Let's put it this way, if you've seen "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," you can see what that movie was parodying, and that's how I felt reading this translation, that it almost felt like a parody. And I don't think that was Ackroyd's intention for it to come across as amusing.
Overall, I do think this is a fine translation for a modern day audience if you are someone wanting to get into Arthurian legend and you don't want to spend forever trying to translate the French or Middle English originals. I appreciated what Ackroyd was trying to do with the text because he certainly cut out a lot of things that were unneeded.
October 16, 2024
3.5 ⭐️
August 18, 2025
bros were beefing over nothing
October 4, 2017
I read this because I love the Arthurian legends and thought this would be more accessible than the original text. It was, but it also felt a little flat and repetitive. I've read much more exciting and interesting interpretations of King Arthur's story.
July 29, 2024
this was firmly ok! it was incredibly dry but i think that’s not the translator’s fault; he did what he could. it definitely serves as an excellent overview of arthur, and it left me with a lot of questions that made me wish i was reading it in class with experts on medieval english social order. this is more a historian’s book than a reader’s book, but i think that helped me think beyond the text.
February 8, 2025
Just wanted to know what was up with Arthurian Legend since I’ve been reading so many books based on it. But damn. It’s so repetitive and one note. Don’t know if it’s this translation or if that’s Le Morte d’Arthur or just the legends in general…
February 23, 2012
The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend by Thomas Malory; adapted by Peter Ackroyd (New York: Viking Adult, 2011. 336 pp) Originally Posted at wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com
Peter Ackroyd, CBE, is a British biographer and novelist. His biographies include those of Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, and Sir Thomas Moore.
Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471) was an English writer and poet, and compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur.
In Praise of Honor and Valor (Or Honour and Valour)
Always a fan of the legend of King Arthur and his knights, I’ve found enjoyment in the chivalry and altogether fascinating exploits within the collective. It’s an unforgettable story of love, adventure, treachery, and magical escapades. The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend is an attempt by Peter Ackroyd to bring the classic story by Sir Thomas Malory into the modern idiom, but I’m not sure he succeeds.
The Beginning
Arthur is raised by a knight, and becomes king when he finds his destiny enclosed in a stone.
“It has been ordained by God that the one who takes up this sword will reign over us...so the people of London set up a great cry. ‘We will have Arthur to be sovereign over us. There must be no more delay! The day has come. God’s will be done!’” (14-15).
The story begins just like you remember it, and Arthur became king. Merlin tells Arthur he will be victorious in battle and a mighty king as well. But, the retold tales are still the same: Merlin, The Sword and the Stone, Arthur and Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Tristram and Isolde, The Quest for the Holy Grail, Arthur’s mendacious son Mordred, and Lancelot’s betrayal of Arthur with his unrequited love for Guinevere.
So, no real surprises here and not much to tell outside of why Ackroyd’s version may have some merit.
Same ‘Ol Same ‘Ol
In the attempt to retell the story of King Arthur, Ackroyd ends up dumbing it down more than bringing it into a new, fresh state. He could have done much more to enliven the story, but he simply translated it into a somewhat monotonous storyline that leaves much to be desired, especially if you’ve read the version by Sir Thomas Malory (Le Morte d'Arthur).
Sure, Malory is a bit hard to get into with all the old English, but once you’ve gained some momentum it’s pretty fascinating. Perhaps I’ve romanticized the Malory version, but the Ackroyd version, to me at least, leaves something to be desired.
There have been countless editions of the classic Malory story over the years, my favorite of which, already modernized, is The Once and Future King by T.H. White. So, my question is, was a newer version really that necessary?
At the same time, however, I think The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend is still worthwhile as it does do some justice to the Arthurian legends of old. But, if it were me, I’d stick with Malory’s original story.
Originally Posted at wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com
Peter Ackroyd, CBE, is a British biographer and novelist. His biographies include those of Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, and Sir Thomas Moore.
Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471) was an English writer and poet, and compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur.
In Praise of Honor and Valor (Or Honour and Valour)
Always a fan of the legend of King Arthur and his knights, I’ve found enjoyment in the chivalry and altogether fascinating exploits within the collective. It’s an unforgettable story of love, adventure, treachery, and magical escapades. The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend is an attempt by Peter Ackroyd to bring the classic story by Sir Thomas Malory into the modern idiom, but I’m not sure he succeeds.
The Beginning
Arthur is raised by a knight, and becomes king when he finds his destiny enclosed in a stone.
“It has been ordained by God that the one who takes up this sword will reign over us...so the people of London set up a great cry. ‘We will have Arthur to be sovereign over us. There must be no more delay! The day has come. God’s will be done!’” (14-15).
The story begins just like you remember it, and Arthur became king. Merlin tells Arthur he will be victorious in battle and a mighty king as well. But, the retold tales are still the same: Merlin, The Sword and the Stone, Arthur and Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Tristram and Isolde, The Quest for the Holy Grail, Arthur’s mendacious son Mordred, and Lancelot’s betrayal of Arthur with his unrequited love for Guinevere.
So, no real surprises here and not much to tell outside of why Ackroyd’s version may have some merit.
Same ‘Ol Same ‘Ol
In the attempt to retell the story of King Arthur, Ackroyd ends up dumbing it down more than bringing it into a new, fresh state. He could have done much more to enliven the story, but he simply translated it into a somewhat monotonous storyline that leaves much to be desired, especially if you’ve read the version by Sir Thomas Malory (Le Morte d'Arthur).
Sure, Malory is a bit hard to get into with all the old English, but once you’ve gained some momentum it’s pretty fascinating. Perhaps I’ve romanticized the Malory version, but the Ackroyd version, to me at least, leaves something to be desired.
There have been countless editions of the classic Malory story over the years, my favorite of which, already modernized, is The Once and Future King by T.H. White. So, my question is, was a newer version really that necessary?
At the same time, however, I think The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend is still worthwhile as it does do some justice to the Arthurian legends of old. But, if it were me, I’d stick with Malory’s original story.
Originally Posted at wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com
January 6, 2024
Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory is one of the foundational works in Arthurian studies; many subsequent writers based their versions on his. The Death of King Arthur, today's review, is an abridged retelling by Peter Ackroyd. His goal is to present a loose translation focused on clarity and simplicity, yet conveying "the majesty and pathos of the great original."
The Death of King Arthur has the following stories:
- The Tale of King Arthur (his origins, aid by Merlin, getting the sword, marriage to Guinevere, etc.)
- The Adventures of Sir Lancelot du Lake
- Tristram and Isolde
- The Adventure of the Holy Grail
- Lancelot and Guinevere
- The Death of Arthur
I read the unabridged Keith Baines translation ten years ago; I found this version better. Ackroyd does well to abbreviate the extremely repetitive original, maintaining familiar plot lines (knight goes out on adventure, bizarre things happen, etc.) and the essence of the tales without getting too boring. It is still repetitive, mind you, just more bearable. I will highlight one aspect: morality.
The morality of the knights is bizarre (yet sadly common to man): they all hold to Christ in word, but their deeds say otherwise. I think that comes through more strongly in this version (at least, I noticed it more): There is certainly a code of honor, but generally regarding fights (not killing a wounded man, for example). They will spill blood and sleep around without remorse, and live by a 'might makes right' code that declares innocence if victorious in battle. They will generally charge into a conflict siding with the weaker party without first figuring out the situation; they will defend a damsel in distress yet often are deceived by witches (yet somehow can be held more culpable for being deceived than other outright sins they commit). It is weird world they live in, yet we are no different.
As Ackroyd presents in the introduction, "the story of Arthur is accompanied by sensations of loss and transitoriness, as well as a note of resignation." It also reflects "a time of great violence and uncertainty" yet "is suffused with the imperatives and rituals of the chivalric code, the important testament of military virtue." Ultimately, I think the tale is worthy of reflection, as it grants not only insights into Medieval ideals but also reflects the hypocrisy of man (in all agse). We think ourselves honorable and may even seem to strive our righteousness, yet commit (and ignore) blatant sins.
The Death of King Arthur has the following stories:
- The Tale of King Arthur (his origins, aid by Merlin, getting the sword, marriage to Guinevere, etc.)
- The Adventures of Sir Lancelot du Lake
- Tristram and Isolde
- The Adventure of the Holy Grail
- Lancelot and Guinevere
- The Death of Arthur
I read the unabridged Keith Baines translation ten years ago; I found this version better. Ackroyd does well to abbreviate the extremely repetitive original, maintaining familiar plot lines (knight goes out on adventure, bizarre things happen, etc.) and the essence of the tales without getting too boring. It is still repetitive, mind you, just more bearable. I will highlight one aspect: morality.
The morality of the knights is bizarre (yet sadly common to man): they all hold to Christ in word, but their deeds say otherwise. I think that comes through more strongly in this version (at least, I noticed it more): There is certainly a code of honor, but generally regarding fights (not killing a wounded man, for example). They will spill blood and sleep around without remorse, and live by a 'might makes right' code that declares innocence if victorious in battle. They will generally charge into a conflict siding with the weaker party without first figuring out the situation; they will defend a damsel in distress yet often are deceived by witches (yet somehow can be held more culpable for being deceived than other outright sins they commit). It is weird world they live in, yet we are no different.
As Ackroyd presents in the introduction, "the story of Arthur is accompanied by sensations of loss and transitoriness, as well as a note of resignation." It also reflects "a time of great violence and uncertainty" yet "is suffused with the imperatives and rituals of the chivalric code, the important testament of military virtue." Ultimately, I think the tale is worthy of reflection, as it grants not only insights into Medieval ideals but also reflects the hypocrisy of man (in all agse). We think ourselves honorable and may even seem to strive our righteousness, yet commit (and ignore) blatant sins.
March 4, 2016
This "retelling" is a decent translation and (badly needed) abridgement of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur.
Which is both its strength and its weakness. The Arthurian material is wonderful. Mallory is perhaps the most inept storyteller in English literature. He sure ain't Chaucer. If you really love the Arthurian stories, read Gottfried von Strassburg, Chretien de Troyes, or any of dozens of others who have told these tales. Even T. H. White, whose extraordinarily inventive 20th-century version puts an anti-war twist on the stories.
I checked a number of passages against Caxton (Caxton's Malory: A New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur Based on the Pierpont Morgan Copy of William Caxton's Edition of 1485). I admit that I've never had the patience to read through Malory in the (very unabridged) original. They seemed reasonably accurate: they have the same rather flat feeling as the Caxton text. I found one strange and beautiful excess at Lancelot's death: Ackroyd describes his face as "surprised by joy," which is a wonderful anachronistic allusion to C. S. Lewis and, in turn, to William Wordsworth that's entirely unsupported by the original. I suspect that if you were to go about it more throughly, you could find more excesses like this. So be it--the book would be better if it were less Malory and more Lewis. Or White. Or Gaiman. Or almost anything.
So, if you want to read the (more or less) complete Arthurian corpus in English, go for it. This is readable. It's not wonderful. But that's Malory coming through, not Ackroyd.
Which is both its strength and its weakness. The Arthurian material is wonderful. Mallory is perhaps the most inept storyteller in English literature. He sure ain't Chaucer. If you really love the Arthurian stories, read Gottfried von Strassburg, Chretien de Troyes, or any of dozens of others who have told these tales. Even T. H. White, whose extraordinarily inventive 20th-century version puts an anti-war twist on the stories.
I checked a number of passages against Caxton (Caxton's Malory: A New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur Based on the Pierpont Morgan Copy of William Caxton's Edition of 1485). I admit that I've never had the patience to read through Malory in the (very unabridged) original. They seemed reasonably accurate: they have the same rather flat feeling as the Caxton text. I found one strange and beautiful excess at Lancelot's death: Ackroyd describes his face as "surprised by joy," which is a wonderful anachronistic allusion to C. S. Lewis and, in turn, to William Wordsworth that's entirely unsupported by the original. I suspect that if you were to go about it more throughly, you could find more excesses like this. So be it--the book would be better if it were less Malory and more Lewis. Or White. Or Gaiman. Or almost anything.
So, if you want to read the (more or less) complete Arthurian corpus in English, go for it. This is readable. It's not wonderful. But that's Malory coming through, not Ackroyd.
May 12, 2022
The legend foretells that King Arthur will return in Britain’s hour of need…
Ackroyd retells the tale of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) like a surreal and fantastical dream. The stories seem to develop at random but at the same time everything feels like it has symbolic meaning, redolent of that other epic of knights and chivalry, Spencer’s The Faerie Queen (1590-96), which must have been heavily influenced by Malory.
There certainly is a lot of symbolism here, especially when the focus moves to the search for the holy grail, but even Ackroyd says that the plot “turns on sudden crises and arbitrary adventures.”
Ackroyd’s language is spare and the prose is for the most part in the guise of simple reportage. There’s not much in the way of interior monologue or psychology, and you’re left to fill in the blanks yourself as reader, if you want to.
The stories here have become the stuff of legend and, in Ackroyd’s slimmed-down retelling, they’re newly strange and thrilling.
These knights, who spend much time rescuing damsels in distress; jousting to prove their prowess and valour, and to prove the purity of those same damsels in distress (God always backs the righteous); and fighting in wars; are transitory figures, who come and go, and when they do go, it’s often with their guts or brains spilling out. The world of King Arthur is a violent one, and an honourable knight’s fortune can turn on a hastily uttered unwise word.
A tone of melancholy invades the final quarter, charting the demise of Arthur and his knights, as Ackroyd, in his introduction, says it does in Mallory too.
Ackroyd retells the tale of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) like a surreal and fantastical dream. The stories seem to develop at random but at the same time everything feels like it has symbolic meaning, redolent of that other epic of knights and chivalry, Spencer’s The Faerie Queen (1590-96), which must have been heavily influenced by Malory.
There certainly is a lot of symbolism here, especially when the focus moves to the search for the holy grail, but even Ackroyd says that the plot “turns on sudden crises and arbitrary adventures.”
Ackroyd’s language is spare and the prose is for the most part in the guise of simple reportage. There’s not much in the way of interior monologue or psychology, and you’re left to fill in the blanks yourself as reader, if you want to.
The stories here have become the stuff of legend and, in Ackroyd’s slimmed-down retelling, they’re newly strange and thrilling.
These knights, who spend much time rescuing damsels in distress; jousting to prove their prowess and valour, and to prove the purity of those same damsels in distress (God always backs the righteous); and fighting in wars; are transitory figures, who come and go, and when they do go, it’s often with their guts or brains spilling out. The world of King Arthur is a violent one, and an honourable knight’s fortune can turn on a hastily uttered unwise word.
A tone of melancholy invades the final quarter, charting the demise of Arthur and his knights, as Ackroyd, in his introduction, says it does in Mallory too.
May 31, 2013
After devouring and adoring Ackryod's brilliant retelling of The Canterbury Tales, I eagerly scooped up his rendition of Malory's The Death of King Arthur, which I always wanted to read, but was always rebuffed by the confusing, clumsy archaic prose. Malory was no writer, after all. He was an imprisoned knight. So, I was excited by Ackryod's readable retelling, to read the oldest literary telling of the wonderful King Arthur tales that have intrigued my imagination for decades.
Alas--and I do not blame Ackryod at all for this, as I don't think he had much to work with--I was very much disappointed. My modern sensibilities and literary thirst simply cries from more character and story than a giant, violent bland soap opera of sex and violence, flat characters slaying red shirts, where make might right, characters whom we are constantly told are good, when they are not. Mostly the knights run around fighting over women whom they shouldn't be sleeping with, killing people they shouldn't be, and chasing after religious icons they don't understand. The story is confusing and unengaging in its simplicity and banality. It's a fascinating study in the code of courtly love and chivalry, but it certainly doesn't make for a good story. Arthur does nothing, Lancelot is an asshole, Guinevere a total bitch, and everyone else gets their brains smeared across the scenery. Frankly, it's boring. Grade: B
Alas--and I do not blame Ackryod at all for this, as I don't think he had much to work with--I was very much disappointed. My modern sensibilities and literary thirst simply cries from more character and story than a giant, violent bland soap opera of sex and violence, flat characters slaying red shirts, where make might right, characters whom we are constantly told are good, when they are not. Mostly the knights run around fighting over women whom they shouldn't be sleeping with, killing people they shouldn't be, and chasing after religious icons they don't understand. The story is confusing and unengaging in its simplicity and banality. It's a fascinating study in the code of courtly love and chivalry, but it certainly doesn't make for a good story. Arthur does nothing, Lancelot is an asshole, Guinevere a total bitch, and everyone else gets their brains smeared across the scenery. Frankly, it's boring. Grade: B
March 13, 2015
Oh dear god....
You know those slapstick comedies that try so hard to be hilarious that they end up being not funny at all? This was kind of like that but it wasn't trying to be funny at all which made it possibly one of the most depressing books I've ever had to read. It was like a Monty Python skit but one that wasn't in the least bit humorous. I don't know how else to describe it.
I honestly don't know how much of the story is based on fact or fiction. I'm guessing it's loosely based on events at that time in history. However if people back then really did act like they acted in this book I am so, so very glad that I didn't live back in those times.
It was written in the weirdest, most horrible style I've ever come across. There were weird little synopsis sentences every few paragraphs which basically ruined any kind of surprise that was coming up in the following few paragraphs. It also read like something my two year old could come up with.
I've read Peter Ackroyd before and it wasn't bad. His Casebook of Victor Frankenstein was a great twist on the original so I wrongly assumed this would be something similar. A modern take on the tale of King Arthur. How wrong was I? Very.
Poor, so, so very poor.
You know those slapstick comedies that try so hard to be hilarious that they end up being not funny at all? This was kind of like that but it wasn't trying to be funny at all which made it possibly one of the most depressing books I've ever had to read. It was like a Monty Python skit but one that wasn't in the least bit humorous. I don't know how else to describe it.
I honestly don't know how much of the story is based on fact or fiction. I'm guessing it's loosely based on events at that time in history. However if people back then really did act like they acted in this book I am so, so very glad that I didn't live back in those times.
It was written in the weirdest, most horrible style I've ever come across. There were weird little synopsis sentences every few paragraphs which basically ruined any kind of surprise that was coming up in the following few paragraphs. It also read like something my two year old could come up with.
I've read Peter Ackroyd before and it wasn't bad. His Casebook of Victor Frankenstein was a great twist on the original so I wrongly assumed this would be something similar. A modern take on the tale of King Arthur. How wrong was I? Very.
Poor, so, so very poor.
January 24, 2012
It's hard to know how to rate this book. On the one hand, I'm sure this really is a "masterful" retelling of Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, as the blurb on the cover claims. However, never having read any earlier translations or retellings, I don't have much of a basis for comparison.
Therefore, rather than rate the quality of the retelling, I can only rate this book as I would any other, whether contemporary or classic, and that would be based on my enjoyment of the reading experience. In that regard, I can only rate The Death of King Arthur as "so-so". It was fine, but quickly became quite repetitive (which I'm sure is true of the original as well). Ultimately, I was bored. Perhaps this says more about me as a reader than about the book itself, but there you have it.
My review: lukewarm, at best. I suppose this just proves that I like my Arthurian legends dressed up in the guise of modern fiction. Give me "The Mists of Avalon" any day!
Therefore, rather than rate the quality of the retelling, I can only rate this book as I would any other, whether contemporary or classic, and that would be based on my enjoyment of the reading experience. In that regard, I can only rate The Death of King Arthur as "so-so". It was fine, but quickly became quite repetitive (which I'm sure is true of the original as well). Ultimately, I was bored. Perhaps this says more about me as a reader than about the book itself, but there you have it.
My review: lukewarm, at best. I suppose this just proves that I like my Arthurian legends dressed up in the guise of modern fiction. Give me "The Mists of Avalon" any day!
April 6, 2019
Це переказ Мелорі, навіть не дуже на сучасний лад. Після прочитання стало зрозуміло на скільки Теренс Уайт близький у своєму "королі..." саме до "смерті артура...". Історія страшне християнізована, особливо в тій частині, де пошуки Грааля. Всі хороші лицарі - цнотливі, або каються. Секс приводить до неприємностей. Не до тих, що й повинен за відсутності контрацепції й медицини, а до втрати лицарської сили і т.ін. Цікаво, звідки в Ланслота що беріг вірність Гвеневері (і лицарській силі) взявся благочестивий до нудоти син Галахад, але якось воно вийшло.
Ця книга зняла моє питання чому Гвеневера врешті зрадила Артуру з Ланселотом - регулярно її хтось у чомусь звинувачує, і справидливо, і зовсім ні, та вимагає негайно спалити. І король у відповідь "ну як треба, то треба". Ланселот раз пораз змагається на поєдинках честі щоб зняти королеву з вогнища. Не дивно що все закінчилось, як закінчилось.
Ця книга зняла моє питання чому Гвеневера врешті зрадила Артуру з Ланселотом - регулярно її хтось у чомусь звинувачує, і справидливо, і зовсім ні, та вимагає негайно спалити. І король у відповідь "ну як треба, то треба". Ланселот раз пораз змагається на поєдинках честі щоб зняти королеву з вогнища. Не дивно що все закінчилось, як закінчилось.
January 8, 2012
Ackroyd retells Mallory's version of events which spawned a plethora of mythology and stories. I haven't read Mallory in ages, and it was with some surprise I recalled how different this Arthur is from the latest offering on Space channel.
Mallory's texts come from continental romances and oral accounts of the age of chivalry. The knights are more revengeful and stupid, for one. Arthur is not as noble as you think (killing all boy children of a certain age a la Pharaoh to avoid Merlin's prophesy that one will be his killer--Mordred), and generally battling a lot.
Even Lancelot and Gawain and Tristram are a lot more bloody and given to the vagaries of lust and deception, even if its in the name of love.
Ackroyd's prose is pretty accessible and offers a good modern reading of the classic text. Sometimes it's good to go back to sources.
Mallory's texts come from continental romances and oral accounts of the age of chivalry. The knights are more revengeful and stupid, for one. Arthur is not as noble as you think (killing all boy children of a certain age a la Pharaoh to avoid Merlin's prophesy that one will be his killer--Mordred), and generally battling a lot.
Even Lancelot and Gawain and Tristram are a lot more bloody and given to the vagaries of lust and deception, even if its in the name of love.
Ackroyd's prose is pretty accessible and offers a good modern reading of the classic text. Sometimes it's good to go back to sources.
April 14, 2016
I read this book as part of a class at uni: Arthurian Myths & Legends. For an Arthurian legends novice it was an excellent introduction to the stories in the tradition, and a good lead-in and contrast to more complicated works such as Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King'. Overall, a very readable version of the stories that does true justice to the colourful characters of the legends: Guinevere, Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, Mordred, etc.
October 13, 2016
The Death of King Arthur is a retelling of Malory's stories about King Arthur. Really what that entails is a simpler summary of the stories collected together in this volume. If you're not able to read Malory's text as well as you would like and simply want the stories then I think this is a good option. Otherwise, go for the actual text, I felt like much of the story was lost without Malory's writing.
July 29, 2023
I don’t normally write reviews for books, but I felt so strongly about this one I had to get this off my chest. I’m not sure how someone could make the Arthurian Legends so boring. This felt like I was reading a textbook. It took me nearly a month to slug through this because I dreaded picking it back up.
I’m only giving this 2 stars instead of 1 because I thought the introduction was interesting.
I’m only giving this 2 stars instead of 1 because I thought the introduction was interesting.
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