Review: Galahad and the Grail by Malcolm Guite

Here and there, someone communicates something that makes you actually clap your hands and raise your voice in a cheer. You cannot help yourself!

It happens to me when Théoden King musters the Rohirrim, when a brother of the Oxford Oratory at J.R.R. Tolkien's old church gives an astoundingly resonant homily, when Max McClean's portrayal of C.S. Lewis in The Most Reluctant Convert invites us to follow our Great Captain through the crack in the wall, and it happened twice for me in listening to the audiobook of Malcolm Guite's Galahad and The Grail. I was inspired to write this book review because I think many readers will have a much-needed experience of validation and encouragement if they bring this volume home.

I confess to not knowing nearly as much as I should about this celebrated author, poet, and musician, but some months ago, I began seeing his charming videos on social media in which someone knocks on the door of his book-lined study and he greets them and shares a little reading with them whilst smoking his pipe. He is an academic, an Anglican priest, a modern bard. By the time I was seeing videos shared by his publisher, Rabbit Room Press, of Mr. Guite sitting in front of one of Tolkien's fireplaces and reading from Gawain and the Green Knight, I knew his forthcoming book was going to be something original and special.

I treated my encounter with it like a little celebration. Goodness knows, a little more ceremony in life would do us no harm. I baked gingerbread, made tea, and settled in for an experience of listening to Mr. Guite read his book via Audible. Within minutes, I had tossed my dessert to one side, leapt up from my sofa, and was clapping with joy over the Prelude in which he vividly describes the call to the poet to take up the old Grail epic in the modern world.

Want to hear it? Go to minute 30 of this video for a live reading and hang onto your gingerbread. The official audio book version is even more invigorating.

My own dear readers know the devotion I feel to reclaiming enchantment, particularly in the face of marketing forces that would have us become mindless for the sake of AI profits. My first book, The Art of Mercy in Middle-earth, is centered on honoring the three gifts of Faërie identified by J.R.R. Tolkien: recovery, escape, and consolation. I don't know if I've written much about my lifelong interest in the Arthurian tales or my particular love of Sir Galahad's quest for holiness in what Professor Tolkien called "Arda Marred", but if any of these touchstones have a meaning to you, I think you may join me in applauding the Prelude. Never has the horn-call to poets of the old tradition been so faint as now, but Mr. Guite is hearing it. A marvelous beginning!

What follows is a genuine wonder tale, with us following Galahad and his fellow knights on adventures throughout the "Perilous Realm", fascinatingly blended with the sometimes-overlooked Christian purpose that is the heart of the Grail cycle. Readers will find warming flickers from the hearthfires of Professor Tolkien and Professor Lewis as we follow a white hart, converse with dryads, and even keep our eyes upon a certain star as a sign of hope. Shakespeare also hovers with references to the forces that "shape our ends". The "cauldron of story" is being stirred well here by Guite, and his modern environmental seasonings will taste well to all who yearn to save our beautiful green earth from climate change and ecological destruction. It is a very good soup!

So good, that when I came to the end and heard not just the closing of the story but the poignant Afterword, I once again clapped thunderously, joyously, impressed, enchanted, encouraged. The poetry is deft and skillful, the movement through the adventure is absorbing, and the new-telling of a very ancient plotline is fresh and inviting. This is a great life's work from a unique and vital voice, for anyone who cares about the future of human dignity, society, and the world. I will eagerly await the second volume of this 3-part epic.

I would love the chance to ask Mr. Guite a question, but I'll try to avoid spoilers here. By the end of the story, Sir Lancelot seems to have been redeemed, though King Arthur yet lives with Queen Guinevere at his side. I am extremely curious about how the author will bring about the "fall of Arthur", if he does so, if Lancelot has already been healed of his folly. Dear Mr. Guite, if you happen to see this review, I would be so honored to hear more about this, if it is not a secret, as this aspect of the story puzzled me a bit.

Galahad and the Grail is a treat for the reader, a retreat from the darkness of the present, a refreshment amid modern dullness, a horn-call that spoke to my heart. It is just the kind of time-honored blessing many are currently adventuring for in the wilds of Middle-earth. Remarkable!