If there is one story with which every child growing up in Britain should be familiar, it is the story of King Arthur. There is no shortage of retelling, but most of them are hack rewritings which debase their source material. Even the best attempts … seem to lack the vital spark which animates the early sources, and which received its classic expression in the prose writings of Sir Thomas Malory.

Rosemary Sutcliff's version, told in three books, The Sword and the Circle, The Light Beyond the Forest and The Road to Camlann, is now complete, and stands … as a valiant attempt to bring the often tragic, violent and sensual tales within the compass of children's understanding without cutting the heart from them. While story and language stay close to Malory, the shaping spirit is recognisably that of the author of The Eagle of the Ninth, The Mark of...