Overview

In his 1999 Introduction to the first reprint of this novel from 1955 - a year of the Cold War that began with the Baghdad Pact and ended with the official start of the Vietnam War - Raymond H. Thompson described Naomi Mitchison's contribution to the Arthurian tradition as 'not only a comic masterpiece, but a guidebook into spiritual growth'. She achieves this by drawing on her own experience as a journalist to explore the fantastic events surrounding King Arthur and the Holy Grail through the eyes of two young reporters - on competing newspapers, with mid-twentieth century values and skills - as they follow the breaking stories and conflicting accounts of the grail quest. Michael Amey, who writes the Introduction to this new edition, points out that her approach was not universally liked by her fellow writers. Tolkien for one objected to her introduction of 'a curious and disturbing blend' of journalists and 'dwarfs with photographic apparatus'. Amey himself argues that To the Chapel Perilous is in name and fact a 'call to adventure' in which Mitchison sets out 'to tell a story of how stories are told'.

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9781849212212

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Naomi Mitchison [1897-1999] was a literary phenomenon. Tireless in her writing, unafraid and often highly unconventional in her opinions, she left an extraordinary legacy. Her novels for adults and children stressed at different times her deep interest in historical and contemporary societies, as well her concerns for the future. She also travelled widely, wrote poetry and plays, memoirs, a war diary, book reviews, political articles, and many letters.; Michael D. Amey is a Professor in the English department at Northern Virginia Community College.; Raymond H. Thompson Is a retired professor of English literature and an active scholar of Arthurian literature, both medieval and modern.

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