The Sword in the Stone, by T.H.White

[mcdow...@sky.com]

(I actually re-read the version bound as the first part of "The Once and Future King")

I decided to re-read The Sword and the Stone because I saw it mentioned here, and two quotes from it have stuck in my head from long ago "The best thing for being sad... is to learn something" (it's a wonderful passage - see https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King for more) and "like anybody in strict training, they think about food". In this book Wart (the future King Arthur) is taught by being magically turned into animals to observe their (apparently very anthropomorphic) societies. The quote about food describes the attitude of hawks kept for falconry, who are trained partly by hunger, and who turn out to have a community similar to that of cavalry officers. A pike (the fish) is a predatory local chief, an ant-hill is a totalitarian dictatorship, a flock of geese an anarchic utopia. All of this is nicely wrapped up as an entertaining YA story. I enjoyed this book, now and when I first read it, many years ago. While I did grow up with a Mother who insisted that learning pursued in straitened rural circumstances was part of my Scots heritage, and who was perpetually on (unsuccessful) diets, I think this book persuaded me to be a little keener on learning, and a little more inclined to put with with mild hunger, than I otherwise would have been.