"T. H. White - The Once and Future King" - читать интересную книгу автора (White T.H)

"Tell us about Mafeking Night," said Kay. "One gets sick of these discussions about right and wrong."
"Mafeking Night..." began the magician, who was prepared to tell anybody about anything. But the King
prevented him.
"Tell us about Lot," he said. "I want to know about him, if I have to fight him. Personally I am beginning
to be interested in right and wrong."
"King Lot..." began Merlyn in the same tone of voice, only to be interrupted by Kay.
"No," said Kay. "Talk about the Queen. She sounds more interesting."
"Queen Morgause...."
Arthur assumed the right of veto for the first time in his life. Merlyn, catching the lifted eyebrow,
reverted to the King of Orkney with unexpected humility.

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"King Lot," said he, "is simply a member of your peerage and landed royalty. He's a cipher. You don't
have to think about him at all."
"Why not?"
"In the first place, he is what we used to call in my young days a Gentleman of the Ascendancy. His
subjects are Gaels and so is his wife, but he himself is an import from Norway. He is a Gall like
yourself, a member of the ruling class who conquered the Islands long ago. This means that his attitude
to the war is the same as your father's would have been. He doesn't care a fig about Gaels or Galls, but
he goes in for wars in the same way as my Victorian friends used to go in for foxhunting or else for
profit in ransoms. Besides, his wife makes him."
"Sometimes," said the King, "I wish you had been born forwards like other people. What with Victorians
and Mafeking NightтАФ-"
Merlyn was indignant.
"The link between Norman warfare and Victorian foxhunting is perfect. Leave your father and King Lot
outside the question for the moment, and look at literature. Look at the Norman myths about legendary
figures like the Angevin kings. From William the Conqueror to Henry the Third, they indulged in
warfare seasonally. The season came round, and off they went to the meet in splendid armour which
reduced the risk of injury to a foxhunter's minimum. Look at the decisive battle of Brenneville in which
a field of nine hundred knights took part, and only three were killed. Look at Henry the Second
borrowing money from Stephen, to pay his own troops in fighting Stephen. Look at the sporting
etiquette, according to which Henry had to withdraw from a siege as soon as his enemy Louis joined the
defenders inside the town, because Louis was his feudal overlord. Look at the siege of Mont St. Michel,
at which it was considered unsporting to win through the defenders' lack of water. Look at the battle of
Malmesbury, which was given up on account of bad weather. That is the inheritance to which you have
succeeded, Arthur. You have become the king of a domain in which the popular agitators hate each other
for racial reasons, while the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac nor the
overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt. Unless
you can make the world wag better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless series of
petty battles, in which the aggressions will either be from spiteful reasons or from sporting ones, and in
which the poor man will be the only one who dies. That is why I have been asking you to think. That is
why___"
"I think," said Kay, "that Dinadan is waving to us, to say that dinner is ready."



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