Any Old Iron is prodigious entertainment, a grand and boisterous novel that sweeps us up and hurls us pell-mell through the major events of this century. Once in the land of Attila; then in that of Arthur; looted by the Nazis at Monte Cassino; seized by the Soviets to be exhibited in Leningrad, King Arthur's Excalibur is the flashing blade that hangs over the fates of men and women caught up in the chaos of history.