The Sword in The Stone by
T.H. White, the first book of
The Once and Future King[?], is a novel about a young boy named
Arthur who befriends a magician named
Merlin. The
Walt Disney Company made an animated movie about it in
1961. This movie introduced
Mad Madam Mim who later appeared in a lot of
Disney comics. The movie is entertaining, but ignores White's carefully-constructed moral lessons in favour of visual gags.
A BBC radio adaptation in 1982 starred Michael Hordern as Merlin. Hordern had already starred as another great literary wizard, Tolkien's Gandalf, in the BBC's Lord of the Rings (1981).