T.H. White has an outstanding capacity for writing about medieval times as merry and lively days, with their own share of the problems of living and loving, war and peace, but with more than their fair share of fun. His "Sword in the Stone" of last year will be remembered widely and happily for its enchantingly rowdy picture of the boyhood of King Arthur, known as the Wart. ["The Witch in the Wood"] is a sort of sequel in the same rambunctious vein, at once learned and lusty and comic. The story carries on with Arthur's battles against the kings who refused to recognize his right to the title of King of England even after he had drawn Excalibur from the stone. But the greater part of the book deals with the doings in the castle and village of Lothian when King Lot and all his knights and foot soldiers had gone off to bear their part in the battle against Arthur. In the course of his rambling story Mr. White has a fine time lampooning wars, chivalry, mother love, teachers, festivals, drinking bouts and what not. He gives the rich flavor of Arthurian times, based on much sound erudition, but does not scruple to introduce howling anachronisms such as quotations from [Rudyard] Kipling twisted to his purpose, odd bits of American slang, modern military terms, a ballad about Bonnie Prince Charlie. And some of his funning has hard common sense at the bottom of it.

Though "The Witch in the Wood" is not exactly an out-and-out sequel to "The Sword in the Stone," it shares the disadvantages inherent in most sequels. It is a gay and bouyant book, but the author's gusty style doesn't hit the reader with the full force of the first volume's fresh impact. And one regrets that there isn't more about our old friend the Wart. The four Lothian lads are a good substitute for Arthur and his boyhood companions, but inevitably they seem like second-string players. The Pip-Pip and Ta-Ta style of British humor -- flourishing on misunderstanding -- which is indulged in continually by Pellinore, Grummore and Palomides, is worked pretty strenuously. But after all, this is quibbling. Why not go the whole hog: totus porcus, as King Lot's old tutor used to say, and call "The Witch in the Wood" a most enjoyable book, gay and giddy enough to make any reader long for the good old days in the land of Lothian and Orkney, or lacking that, for more of T.H. White's version of them.