JK Rowling has admitted her 'Harry Potter' books were influenced by White – Merlin in 'The Sword in the Stone' is a model for Albus Dumbledore (as is the Professor in 'Mistress Masham’s Repose'). In time he combined these interests with idiosyncratic style, retelling the Arthur legend in a series of four novels with modern language and characterisations, but set in a kind of timeless evocation of England. His college thesis was on the legends of King Arthur collected by Thomas Mallory and he wrote a popular book about living in the country. White immersed himself in the English countryside and English history. It was a relief when his parents divorced when he was 14 and the young White never seems to have returned to India. GH White had won the prize for revolver shooting at the Poona Police week). “I am told that my father and mother were to be found wrestling with a pistol, each claiming that he or she was going to shoot the other and himself or herself, but in any case beginning with me,” he once wrote.

White’s memories of India included the lizards and fireworks that would have fascinated a child, but also fights between his parents. His father became an alcoholic, as many in his profession did, and his mother grew distant after their son was born.

In the hot and dusty locations where his father worked marriages rapidly strained and that happened with his parents. The Times of India (ToI) reported the wedding of his parents on Octowith a full column and a half describing the bride’s dress and the presents they received, but ended by saying “they left for Nandubar, Khandeish by the 11.30 train from Byculla.” White’s father, Garrick Hanbury White, worked in the Indian police service, in a variety of locations in Western and Central India.

Perhaps it wasn’t just the year, but where he was born too – in Bombay, in a decidedly unliterary part of the British Raj world. He had died in 1964, but perhaps the problem was, as Christopher Fowler writes in 'The Book of Forgotten Authors' he would be far better remembered had he been born a little later, rather than in 1906.” He was too young to be part of the first generation of classic fantasy writers, like JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis, but not quite part of the postwar growth in the genre. White himself then fell into literary obscurity.

Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White