Steinbeck and the Matter of Arthur: Bruton, Somerset, 1959

One of America’s greatest and most prolific writers of the twentieth century, John Steinbeck is famous for his epic novel of rural deprivation in the United States during the Depression, 'The Grapes of Wrath' (1939). He is less well known for his incomplete retelling, a translation into modern American English, of Thomas Malory’s late medieval romance, 'Le Morte d’Arthur', which was published posthumously in 1976 as 'The Acts and Deeds of King Arthur and his Noble Knights'. This is the story of his research into 'the Matter of Arthur' and the time he spent living in Somerset, England, sixty years ago.