Thomas Malory

In 1469-70, a man named Thomas Malory (1405-1471) sat down to write a book about the adventures of King Arthur and his knights – a book that indirectly gave rise to works ranging from the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson to the Prince Valiant comics and Camelot musicals of the twentieth century. Produced at the height of the Wars of the Roses (c.1469-70), then published by England's first printer, William Caxton, in 1485, Malory's text has been seen throughout the past five hundred years as both an idealisation of perfect knightly behaviour and a thoroughly bad example... and sometimes as both at once. Writing from prison, Malory adapts a bewilderingly wide variety of sources – including English histories, books of prophecy, popular romances and prestigious French Arthurian cycles – to produce a text that is often seen as the point of inception for modern-day Arthurian storytelling. Preserved in two prints and a long-lost manuscript, all dating from the late fifteenth century, it encompasses, in Caxton's words, 'noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin', and is still...