T H White born 29 May 1906 (d. 1964)Terence Hanbury White was an English writer born in Bombay (Mumbai), India. After graduating from Cambridge with a first-class degree in English, he taught for a few years at Stowe School before becoming a full-time writer.
He is most famous for writing The Once and Future King, a sequence of novels based on Sir Thomas Malory's 15th-Century romance Le Morte D'Arthur reinterpreting the legend of King Arthur. The Broadway musical Camelot and the Disney film The Sword in the Stone are both based on The Once and Future King. We probably owe much of our 'historical' knowledge of King Arthur to White's work.
He was also a closeted homosexual, turning first to psychotherapy and, when it failed, alcohol as a way out of what he perceived as a problem.
A rather private and solitary man, he eventually retired to the island of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, but died from heart failure on a ship in Piraeus, Greece, while returning from a lecture tour in America.
White's work was an influence on science-fiction writer Michael Moorcock, and J K Rowling has acknowledged the influence of White's work on the Harry Potter novels.