About Me

Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire was born in 1416 to a noble, land-owning family. There is evidence that he was a member of Parliament in 1445. By 1450, though, a slight change in his personality is detectable, insofar as he began a career of crime that included the attempted murder of the Duke of Buckingham, burglarizing Coombe Abbey, raping the wife of one Henry Smyth, as well as general theft, vandalism, extortion, rustling cattle, and stealing deer. It should come as a surprise to no one that he landed in prison in London by 1452. Over the course of the War of the Roses he was liberated by the Yorkists in 1460, but by 1468 he was back in jail. It was there that he wrote his masterpiece, which he called "The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table", but which was later shorted to "Le Morte d'Arthur" (the title of the final chapter) by the publisher William Caxton.