Defeated by his treacherous son Mordred after the collapse of his kingdom, T. H. White's King Arthur finds himself, as part of a dreamlike afterlife, in Merlyn's cave. Here he is offered the chance to return to his childhood for an evening in order to learn a series of lessons deemed necessary by the magician and his committee of talking animals. Sceptical, Arthur declines the offer to be ‘born again, like little ones’, and is swiftly admonished by Merlyn. In this meta-textual exchange, White's narrative seems to appeal to a child audience. The assertion ‘everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents’ appears intended to delight a child reader, flattering his or her youthful knowledge and reversing the traditional dynamic whereby the child is at the mercy of superior adult intelligence. Merlyn suggests Arthur should feel privileged by the chance to be ‘born again’ through magic, linking the state of being a ‘little one’ not with naivety and ignorance but instead with ‘high authority’. Arthur's matter-of-fact presentation of this as a universal truth – ‘everybody knows’ – which is then qualified by Merlyn – ‘you and I know it’ – positions the child within an exclusive group. Forever misunderstood and patronised by condescending adults, the child is here liberated and placed in the privileged position of having his or her true abilities recognised by the legendary figures of King Arthur and his famous magical adviser. Somewhat paradoxically, the child's very status as marginalised and excluded places him or her among a knowledgeable elite. Yet Merlyn's warning, ‘the people who are going to read this book do not’, complicates this relationship. By identifying ‘the people who are going to read this book’ as those very adults who are ‘stupid about children’, Merlyn calls the status of the implied reader into question. Is this a text for children or adults?