No, I didn’t read this as a teenager like everyone else. I was reading and re-reading Terrance Dick’s Doctor Who novelisations. They fed my need for mythic heroes and running down corridors (there’s not enough of the latter in Sir Gawain; instead, there are plenty of tips on slaughtering and skinning a deer). 

But now that I’ve read Sir Gawain, I’ve realised that fantasy fiction peaked in the 14th Century.* Stuff your Tolkiens**, your Fiests, your Clark Ashton Smiths, and your George R. R Martins (but not Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay; I love that book); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the ur-text, and nothing has ever surpassed it. And the fact you all knew this—yes, all of you—and didn’t bother to mention it really pisses me off. 

Most of you know the plot, but for three who don’t know the story, the Green Knight turns up to a banquet at King Arthur’s Court and throws down a challenge to those present. He will let a man strike him with the axe he’s holding as long as he can return the blow a year and a day later. Sir Gawain, the idiot (because, come on… ), takes on the challenge. He picks up the axe and chops the Green Knight’s head off. This bit shocked me. I don’t know what I expected from the poem, but not a bloke with blood spouting from his neck hole, his head rolling around on the floor. The Knight aint dead, though. He picks up his head, plonks it back onto his neck and tells the somewhat surprised Gawain that he will be expecting the Knight at the Green Chapel in a year and a day. And because Sir Gawain isn’t someone to shirk his responsibilities, he sets off for the Green Chapel just before Christmas (yes, like Die Hard, this is also a Christmas story).

The titular knight goes through a series of adventures that the Gawain Poet decides not to bother with. Exhilarating adventures possibly involving dragons and Wodwos and other magical creatures. But, nah, instead, we jump to Gawain encountering a “splendid castle” where he’s looked after by the King and seduced by the Queen. There’s much hunting and sexy bits with the Queen trying to nuzzle up to a naked Gawain who’s just trying to have a lie in. This happens over three days, and just as you’re wondering where all this hunting, skinning of deers and cock-teasing is going, it all comes together in a brilliant denouement.

It’s bloody marvellous. Every. Single. Bit. Of. It. And I’m now ruined forever. No fantasy epic will ever match the glorious heights of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Well, except for Tigana. Fuck that’s a great novel.

*Look, I haven’t read Le Morte d’Arthur, authored by Sir Thomas Malory a century later, but I’m going to take the punt and say that it’s not better than the utter brilliance that is Sir Gawain.

**Yes, I know he did a modern English translation. It’s not the one I read, though.