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He says Gawain is nuanced, complex by turns brave and courteous, worldly and fallible. Lowery – an American film-maker based in Texas – has relished the poem since his teens.

You never quite knew where you stood with Gawain. The more books I read, the more confused I became. He was variously brave, weak, brutish, venal and steadfast as smart as a wolf and as dumb as a chimp. He was a lead actor in some, a bit-part player in others. Read another and he was recast as a boorish thug. Read one book and you’d come away thinking that Gawain was a hero. He was, I now see, my first literary crush.Īrguably he jumped around too much, this indefatigable nearly-man of Arthurian legend (nearly pure enough to drink from the Grail nearly tough enough to beat Lancelot in battle). They were signifiers of virtue (Galahad), evil (Mordred) or all-round knightly prowess (Lancelot). The other knights were largely fixed in place. For a year, maybe two, I followed his exploits with the clenched fanboy intensity that others reserved for footballers or singers, pursuing him through paperbacks and comic books, from Roger Lancelyn Green to John Steinbeck, as though each retelling was a fresh start, a brand new adventure. My favourite knight was Gawain, the king’s nephew, who falls into shadow and then redeems himself at the end. In the dark age of my childhood I loved the tales of King Arthur.

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