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LIVE STREAM Replay: Always Winter and Never Christmas? · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to it's always winter but never Christmas. This is the Oxford Centre
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  for Fantasy spending time with C. S. Lewis and Tolkien and special guests on the theme
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  of the holiday season. Now as you can see we have with us Malcolm Geight, poet and writer
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  and Anglican priest and Catherine Langerish who is a novelist and fairy and folktale expert
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  and it's a great delight because they both are experts on all things Tolkien and Lewis
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  so we're going to have a lot of fun in this session now. So first of all just thinking
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  about Christmas the first of these writers between Lewis and Tolkien that you tend to think
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  of is of course C. S. Lewis and I think he's almost got his own Christmas season now thanks
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  to the stage versions of the Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe. I mean that's for two reasons
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  obviously it has the one full snowy landscapes which lend themselves to Christmas shows but
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  also it has the very special arrival of a Christmas guest in the middle and we'll come
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  to him in a minute. But perhaps we like to start by saying what are your memories of
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  either Tolkien or Lewis in connection with your own Christmases back in the day? Did you
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  have any special moments that you remember? Cath I think you had a story that you told
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  me? Yes well it just so happens that the Christmas I was 8 I think it was. My mother I was used
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  to get books for Christmas because I was a massive bookworm even then and my mother must have
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  picked for me one of the non-ear books she cannot have realised that there was a series I think
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  because she chose the silver chair and so as I was opening my Christmas presents amongst
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  all the enid lightens out pop this book the silver chair and it had a cover the famous puffin
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  book with the cover by Pauline Baines featuring the underground caverns and lots and lots of little
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  gnomes or goblins and I looked at this and I shuddered. I really put me off I didn't think I was
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  going to like this book at all because about a year earlier I came across a truly truly dreadful
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  fairy tale called the Hobbios in my school reading book featuring featuring extremely unpleasant
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  little goblins and this completely freaking out so I left the silver chair to the very last
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  of my Christmas books but I really couldn't resist I mean it was a book I hadn't read and I think
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  my mother knew that I would come round to it in the end and so I opened it and I was just blown away
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  you know there I was in this amazing world of of a fairy tale talking hours and castles and
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  lost princes and green ladies and serpents and it was so exciting and so relatable and even though
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  a fairy tale so very physical I was just enchanted and of course this was in the 60s and sort of
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  CSLOS was really huge all my friends were reading the same books and we almost formed this bond at
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  school where we talk about Nania we it wasn't even that we wanted to we wanted to be there we wanted
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  to go there wasn't so much that we wanted to have adventures there we simply wanted to be there
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  so it really was one of the best Christmas presents in my life I think really how about you Malcolm
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  did you ever get something like that for Christmas oh that's wonderful I do love that thing
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  Catherine about just wanting to be there not necessarily just to have adventures there but to be
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  there yes the quality of the land itself well being there and or at least Christmas and the
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  line in which the wardrobe had a sort of early association for me which is slightly odd because
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  I was born in Nigeria and brought up there and in Zimbabwe until I was until I was 10 and although
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  we sumpt each year we went back to England on leave it was almost always in the summer
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  but solemnly at Christmas in both Nigeria and Zimbabwe the expat community exchanged Christmas cards
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  with robins in the snow and you know snow falling everywhere and fur trees and sleigh bells and
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  reindeer and I would be curious as a little boy what what is this white stuff was that
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  oh that's that's that's from from from back home you know you'll get that one because
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  there was referred to somewhere else as home whereas I you know I didn't know any of that
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  home other than the place with you know with with the the poor pause and the bananas and the
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  beautiful palms you know so and then eventually one Christmas you know an African Christmas I was
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  amidst all the other cards I was given a copy of the line the witch in the wardrobe
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  and there was all this snow and fur coats and snow and fur trees and so there was a sort of
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  strange fusion in my mind going on between nine here in England and I kind of want I
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  some of thought perhaps England becomes more magical in the winter you know there was something
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  and in fact my favorite of the non-earth stories I got I got to say it remains my favorite is
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  the voyage of the dawn treader and I was excited because that mentioned the actual name of a place
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  in England as the start of the story and that place was Cambridge and eventually we suddenly left
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  we very suddenly when I was I mean I sort of was a bit too honest but but now that time we
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  very suddenly left Zimbabwe my in Smith as it was really easy then had declared UDI had essentially
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  an illegal government my father was opposed to his racist interference into the life of the
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  university anyway we ended up being expelled well in fact my mother and my sister left first
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  and the place we went to was Cambridge and I had this sequence on it somewhere in Cambridge there
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  is a house with a picture of an onion ship I need to find the house I tried the backs of various
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  wardrobes so yes there was a sort of magical thing and something about homecoming blended in
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  because of Christmas and the snow wow I think for me my association is not for my own childhood
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  but for my children's childhoods so many years ago when they were very little I mean toddlers
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  their godfather lived at the kilns which is CS Lewis's home and where the young professionals
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  lived during most of the year and then they move out to allow the CS Lewis Society to have their
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  summer courses anyway so whilst the godfather was living there the the people living there
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  decided to throw a Christmas party for the children of their friends and the way the kilns works
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  is that the attic has a it's not up in a sort of a ladder it runs along the eaves so they took
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  the back off a wardrobe oh wow and they put it over the attic door and then they dressed the inside
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  of the attic with I suppose cotton wall and fairy lights and a lamp post and then put fur well
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  fake fur coats in the wardrobe so the children literally in CS Lewis's house walked through a
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  wardrobe into the attic and that's my abiding memory of that which was so special that's lovely
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  so let's go back to the sort of the theme of Christmas in the actual books and obviously in terms
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  of CS Lewis and Nania we're talking about a world of talking animals that's how he thought of it
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  that's that's the sort of nub of the idea behind it but you get much more than talking animals in
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  Nania and you get some very strange guests turning up including lots of guests from Greek mythology
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  and others but famously in the line in which in the wardrobe you also get the arrival of Father
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  Christmas what is he doing there now can you help us can you help us with this well yeah I mean I know
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  actually I mean a lot of readers don't like Father Christmas as appearance in Nania and they feel
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  he's sort of somehow out of place there in fact my husband says that as a little boy he he felt it
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  was something wrong about it personally I never minded although I do think possibly Lewis was
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  wise not to invite him back but frankly when a writer has come up with a wonderful phrase like
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  always winter in another Christmas I know they tell you to kill your darlings but I don't think
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  that's a darling that you know you you can bring yourself to kill so we had to do something and
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  let me just remind you how Lewis describes him you've got to remember where it happens the
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  beavers and the preferences have escaped from the the Dan yes because the white witch is after
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  them and they realize that Edmund has betrayed them and they're hiding in a hole in a river bank
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  and they hear sleigh bells and they feel that it may be the white witch so Mr Beaver bravely goes
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  out to look and of course he finds it's not the white witch it's Father Christmas with his brown
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  and he calls them out and then we are told that what they see is a huge man in a bright red robe
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  brightest hollyberries with a hood that had fur inside and a great white beard that fell like a
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  foamy waterfall over his chest and then we're told that he was so big and so glad and so real
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  that they all became quite still so I think he knows that we there's a little bit I've missed out
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  where he's told that they knew who he was immediately but he's not like you think of him here
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  he's this he's got this extra present and I think that the hollyberry comparison now reminds me of
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  the green night and go away in the green night but a look who rides into Arthur's hall with a
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  holly branch in his hand the greatest in green and groves a bear and combines pagan giant elf
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  and Christian in a single figure but I'm also reminded of other winter spirits there's the Russian
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  Morosko Father Frost and in Russian fairy tales he's the white bearded spirit of the snowy woods
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  who may if you address him very politely give you gifts instead of freezing you to death I have a
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  little picture here by Ivan Billyburn you have to look a little bit carefully I like to
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  you can see him but there you will see the figure of Morosko addressing a shivering damsel who's
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  waiting for him in the woods and this comes from a fairy tale collected by Alexander up and up
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  and I can never say this Alexander a panacea there you go and then this fairy tale a jealous
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  setmother persuade her husband to take his daughter out into the woods on a cold winter night
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  and leave her to die in the forest she says drive Marfa to her bridegroom old man drive into the forest
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  right up to the big pine that stands on the hill and their hand Marfa over to Morosko Frost
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  and I thought I would just read what happened is because here I have this ancient book of
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  Russian fairy tales and the girl is left shivering in the forest she sat and shivered the cold had
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  pierced her through she would have cried aloud but she had not strength enough only her teeth
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  shattered suddenly she heard a sound not far off Frost was crackling away on a fur from fur to fur
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  he was leaping and snapping his fingers presently appeared on the very pine under which the maiden
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  was sitting and from above her head he cried at the warm maiden warm warm my dear father Frost
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  she replied Frost began to descend lower all the more crackling and snapping his fingers to the
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  maiden said Frost at the warm maiden at the warm fur one warm and I frost dear warm and I
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  father dear Frost began cracking more than ever and more loudly did he snap his fingers into the
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  maiden he said at the warm maiden at the warm pretty one at the warm my darling the girl was by this
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  time numb with cold and she could scarcely make herself heard she replied oh quite warm frost
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  theorist now Frost then takes pity on the girl he wraps her up in fur and blankets and next day when
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  the stepmother sends her father out to bring back the body she's sitting there dressed in a beautiful
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  bridal shawl with a casket of jewels and of course this gets taken back and then of course the
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  stepmother sent her young daughters out into the woods with hope that they will come back with a
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  similar bounty only their rude to grandfather Frost and freeze to death so I checked and it seems
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  that Morosco was originally a Slavic snow spirit or winter wizard apparently he was suppressed
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  under the Soviet Union as being a bit too fanciful and sort of suspiciously sort of churchy
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  pretty strange but it's now very popular again and I've even found a picture of Vladimir Putin
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  meeting an effigy of Morosco and he he he's very similar I mean he's got the long white beard
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  the fur coat the fur hat the boots he carries a magic staff and he rides in a triker
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  but going back to father christmas how far the christmas has got very different origin from the
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  American Santa Claus he's not descended from St Nicholas he's a spirits or a personification of
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  the winter festival and you'll find that in the 16th century a character called father Yule used
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  to parade through the city of york on the winter solstice December 21st riding a goat or being
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  drawn in a carriage pulled by a goat carrying a loaf of bread and a leg of lamb and this custom
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  was suppressed in 1572 by a not an annoyed archbishop he appeared in mark masks and entertainment
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  throughout the tudor period as captain christmas or sir christmas and in a court mask of 1638
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  in which shrug tied in christmas sort of vie for supremacy christmas appears as an old reverend
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  gentleman in a third gown and cap who proclaims I am the king of good cheer and feasting
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  though I come but once a year to reign over baked boiled roast and plum porridge
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  so I think if you can set aside the very commercial father christmas that were unfortunately stuck
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  with today his appearance in nine years a lot easier to accept if you think of him as having
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  this ancestry of ancient winter spirit whose appearance signifies celebration and feasting
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  in the middle of very harsh weather I think it's easier to sort of accept if you've got problems
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  with this at all which I tend to be honest I was always impressed by the gifts that he comes with
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  it's not like the ones that I got at the end of my bed you know sort a bone arrow but also a tea
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  service very useful not to mention not to mention mending Mrs beaver's say well giving Mrs beaver an
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  entire sewing machine indeed exactly in the drawings like the ones my mother had and used
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  my mother actually in appearance was very like Mrs beaver she's quite small and round and often
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  sitting at a singer sewing machine so I was loved that no I have to say I did like for you in the
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  whole father christmas episode it didn't because I was so little when I got that first line the
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  witch in the wardrobe that I needed help and my mother and father between them read it to me
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  and it was partly where I think I was associated with my mother and Mrs beaver who was very pleased
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  about this and my father you know did all the voices wonderfully and did a very good father Christmas
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  I was very excited by that episode because I had an ear and an eye for detail and I had remembered
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  that the white witch had instructed her minions not to take the bells when she went on the slay
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  in pursuit so I thought oh bells is it but I thought there were no bells and then it's a
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  wonderful dramatic moment where just where they think is to be the most danger comes this jovial
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  convivial wonderful spirit of encouragement yeah so I mean I I'm totally with you
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  careful me let's not go back to an American tradition or even St Nick in that sense certainly not
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  the diminutive little figure of the night before Christmas there is a this is father you this is
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  a great embodiment of the kind of warmth and feasting and the whole essentially human spirit that
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  says when things are bleak and cold outside we shall be snug we shall have warmth we shall have
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  it's it's it's you know the person who gets that snugness and warmth and indeed that whole spirit
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  so well as Dickens of course and you know in some ways Dickens convivial green cloud Christmas spirit
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  and then Christmas Carol is is very much there there's a brilliant short story which I'm sure Lewis
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  knew a lot of short stories really says a little anecdote almost in the Chesterton's tremendous
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  trifles where Chesterton meets father Christmas he finds him in a little shop in the dingy back street
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  in Battersea and and he's very worried about me he says oh you know I'm not very worried he refuses
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  to take money for a toy that that Chesterton's buying he says I can't so a new fangled
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  thinker taking money I can't do it I have always given things away and then Chesterton's way you
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  might be father Christmas this well I am I'm not very well at the moment I mean declining and then
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  suddenly Charles Dickens walks into the shop and says but he was dying in my time good to see you
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  father Christmas and then Sir Richard Steele what's in it says but I believe he was dying in my time
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  and then Robin Hood steps in and the whole shop is to the stories called the shop of Ghost
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  is full of people going right back into English history and literature for whom this figure has
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  been important all of whom were slightly worried that he was dying in their time so so anyway all
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  of that but I mentioned the jaw reality and there's a very interesting thing that as I'm sure you
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  know deep and important as was the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien and vital as was Lewis's
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  role in being as talking himself that at one point his only audience is only readership and asking
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  more for him talking was to some degree out of sympathy with the non-earth project and one of
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  the things that he found most irritating explicitly was father Christmas and that was because
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  in spite of his having produced these wonderful father Christmas so the reason was to do with his
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  sense of genre and form and he didn't think he could mix mythologies he simply thought you cannot
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  have forms and father Christmas in the same secondary world there's a there's a there's a
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  dissonance and a mismatch now Michael Warden his wonderful book planet non-ear has has
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  ably defended Lewis by pointing out that as it were each of the seven chronicles is under the
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  the sort of presiding genius or tutula spirit of one of the medieval seven heavens one of which
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  of course is the sphere of jove or Jupiter from which we get the word jovial and also ideas
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  Jupiter is associated of course with kingship with royalty with but through kingship and royalty
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  he's associated with large-est generosity feasting and he's the opposite as it were of the freezing
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  satan he's that you know so according to to Ward's theory the sign under which the whole of the
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  line the which in the wardrobe is Jupiter just as the sign of the dawn treader is Saul the salad
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  of the sign of the silver chair is the moon and he therefore thinks that that that Lewis produces a
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  kind of consistency of field throughout the book by taking the associated cluster of ideas
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  in relation to Jupiter so kingship is obviously a great theme of the thing I mean the whole point
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  of the story in some senses that they're going to be crowned as the kings and queens and care
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  parallel and they're on that journey good feasting the feasting produced by father Christmas
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  is the prime thing but in that book you constantly get the shadow side of each thing
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  so the shadow side of the good feasting the false Christmassy gift is the the gift of the
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  Turkish Delighted Queen and she also promises a false kingship yes to Edmund so you get you get
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  the it's a wonderfully Augustinean but you get the sense that all the evil in that book are
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  our corruptions of an initial good there's a good version of everything that has an enormous
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  yes waiting behind everything every small perversion that has to be said no to there's the big
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  yes version of it so there's the feasted care parallel and so in a sense father Christmas in
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  that that sheer bonnemy and large s and giving and serious giving with no strings attached no
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  extraction no is the kind of good counterbalance to the the parallel encounter in snowy woods with
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  them it's quite a mythical figure and that she is a kind of snow queen of course so in a sense
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  I think Lewis has taken two big mythical figures I'm sure your Russian counterparts are all in
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  there just as the the hands-on to snow queen is there and and he's he's used the one to counterbalance
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  the other so I think the whole father I mean I don't I don't you you would be the same book if you
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  mentioned that episode I think it's a very important part in the whole constellation of goodness
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  that is plustering around the image of the jovial and and all um all giving king I like that and
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  I'm now seeing the um Father Christmas's wonderful cup of hot strong tea with cream in it as the
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  the counterpart or the or the opposite of the snow the snow queens um drink which I think she
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  she sort of um she it's not really a drink is it but she sort of drops from a bottle some
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  some yeah right is as it falls and produces I think Turkish to life at the moment it's no it's it's
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  it's it's it's a it's a it's a beautiful but uses a drink here but that's right or something like that
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  yes yeah yeah so so that's definitely not not very good for Redmond either
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  yeah I have a pretty I've always enjoyed Father Christmas and I mean I've said it like the
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  toy center it's always interesting for me of course particularly since my hair so turn white
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  at this time of year when I'm walking along the streets or in trains very small children tug
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  their mothers um and points excitedly to me and I I say saying I'm on holiday before the big season
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  you know I think that's a wonderful image to take away with us from the line in the
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  Witch and the Wardrobe but if we were looking to do more Christmas shows with a C.S. Lewis
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  feel are any of the other books that he writes lending themselves to this season I was thinking
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  of your mention of the Silver Chair which um actually does have a wintry you feel to it
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  oh yes yes well apart from the fact that I was given the book at Christmas and it would have been
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  a snowy Christmas because it was probably sort of 1963 64 yeah which was very very snowy um yes
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  I mean does nothing quite so cozy is that this is what Malcolm was saying about about sitting in
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  a lovely warm house reading about a freezing winter journey um so yeah I mean it's not necessarily
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  Christmas time because the Giants feast in Harfang is is called the Autumn Feast but they do get
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  their sort of blizzard um and they are eating just to mention they're eating turkey oh yes yes
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  I forgot about that all as well as and humans but you know I also eat sort of a talking deer
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  I think and they're always very sad um but yes and and I just remember and I still enjoy this um
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  reading about you know their miserable struggle at the wet soaking snow-filled ledges you know
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  arriving at the gate of Harfang bruised and miserable and tired and crotchety um and then being
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  welcomed into this um you know into the apparent the deceptive warmth and shelter of Harfang
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  and what always struck me even when I was a child was the sheer physical pleasure of um the contrast
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  if you like of of Jill having a bath in a giant tub that's so large you can swim in it hot water
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  so much that you can swim in it and then getting out and having an enormous i acres of giant towel
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  on which you all you have to do is roll around in front of the planet to get tried and frankly
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  anybody that anybody from my generation and possibly your generation welcome who who lived in a
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  pretty sort of chilly house without double glazing um you know fired mostly that heated mostly by
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  cold fast you know getting out of a bath to get yourself dry in a pretty chilly bathroom the idea
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  of being able to just roll around on a on a great big towel into a huge fire was was wonderful
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  I mean I always wanted to try it well I always think you know all the sort of physical pleasures in
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  those books are partly driven I think by the really quite dire experience of England immediately
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  after the war internationally not a lot of fuel for heating trough the rooms short commons
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  to give the children at least in these books these wonderful feasts and unashamedly glorious feasts
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  so there's I suppose the other I mean perhaps this is a bit um wicked I don't know but another
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  feature you might think from the half-bang scenes that might be familiar to some people from Christmas
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  parties is um is probably I'm having a little bit more of the bottle than is good for him
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  getting himself a bit a bit well there's a wonderful bit where he keeps on trying to say
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  but can't quite manage to say I'm a respectable marsh with him and he says respectably go I'm
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  a respectably and then of course he makes out that he was only pretending in order to get
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  in it and you know there's it's a lovely bit of sort of weakness in puddle gum I'm puddle gum
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  is one of my favorite characters in that book and the lovely idea of the sort of the apparently
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  gloomy person who has this inner courage and when he sees it on a thing that's really the case
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  changes the course of the story so yeah I think that's true I mean I think you might have the other
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  books um they don't have I mean the obvious thing to say if we want to speak of course he was very
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  careful many times over Lewis to say that it's not an allegory but a supposal and that he's
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  only trying to think of supposing that that God Almighty were to be be born into another world
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  which is a world of animals of course he would be a lion and so but even given that it's a
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  supposal and not an allegory it is quite striking that there are no infancy narratives for Aslan
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  Aslan always appears I mean in that sense I mean although he draws on John a lot
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  in terms of the narrative arc um the the nine he had is much more like Marx gospel of course
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  Marx symbol is the lion um when when Marx gospel Jesus appears immediately he's there you know
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  John the Baptist proclaims him and he's he's there he's out he's fully formed he's come
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  to proclaim the kingdom which is exactly what Aslan does to user I mean you know it's so it's
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  an absence quite marking and sort of feel feel to that of course Marx doesn't have the the
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  infancy narrative so we don't have that and I don't think Lewis could have done it successfully
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  and I I think he knew he couldn't so the closest he gets to it in some sense of another transformation
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  which isn't so much Christmasy in fact it's kind of more history but is is is is the appearance
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  um at the end of the law the dawn treader as the lamb um and um a direct direct quotation from
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  John 21 come and have breakfast um and the fish grilling on on on thing and and the
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  those who encounter him getting out of a boat in order to do so and so that that that that's very
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  um very clear but I I think the Christmas associations are the others are much more to do with
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  those of us who were lucky enough to have these books doled out to us with a year in between
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  waiting desperately for the next one and waiting for Christmas to come so that the next book would come
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  even though you know I was reading them after the series had been completed my parents sensibly
• 29:48
  um didn't didn't go out and get the box set you know they they let me live with a book for
• 29:53
  quite a while and then they gave me the next one oh I longed to own the box set because I never
• 29:58
  ever did oh I I eventually bought the book so I mean yeah I I've lived with and read and reread
• 30:05
  these books and more like so then of course I did have the pleasure of reading them to my children
• 30:10
  and um yeah though for me I think the Christmas the Christmas side of it is much more to do with
• 30:18
  the snugness the conviviality the sense that we shall have a feast I mean there's a wonderful
• 30:24
  description of the feast that's set out and renewed every day on Aslan's table at the at the end
• 30:30
  of the dawn trailer and the bed and you know and that I think that lay that defended me I mean it
• 30:39
  wouldn't be able to say it's at a time but it defended me imaginatively and at a very deep level
• 30:44
  from dacetism and you know Jesus wasn't really in the flesh or from an overspiritualized religion
• 30:51
  from any sort of pure tale of the goodness you know what what Dante calls the holy and glorious
• 30:57
  flesh I think I think all that good honest thoroughly enjoyable unashamed celebratory feasting
• 31:07
  around something holy yeah they are of course the direct our Christmas reference in the nanias
• 31:15
  in the naniad Lewis saves for the very last one um where he deliberately makes it a stable
• 31:21
  into which they're all driven but the stable really is the door into an asense contains that
• 31:26
  and they whereas inside the stable is the whole of naniah and then asans country and it's left to
• 31:30
  Lucy of course who's always the the most perspicuous and I mean her name Lucy means like she
• 31:36
  receives to the heart of everything Lucy she says in our world and a stable in our world
• 31:43
  can once contain something bigger than the whole world Lewis is probably thinking of that beautiful
• 31:47
  line of john dunes to marry actually into where he says immensity clustered in the idea womb
• 31:55
  um so yeah there's a lovely little reference just at the end of the naniad to the stable yes
• 32:01
  so whilst we're in the stable and perhaps Malcolm you might want to read us the nativity
• 32:07
  poem by cs Lewis himself it's a poem which you might have met in an anthology but let's enjoy the
• 32:13
  season with oh it's just I love this I love this he's thinking about the beasts at the stable
• 32:20
  it's a poem of great humility actually but also I'm never kind of quite a human self-deprecating
• 32:25
  human the nativity among the oxen like an ox I'm slow I see a glory in the stable grow which with
• 32:38
  ox's dullness might at length give me an ox's strength among the asses stubborn I as they
• 32:50
  I see my savior where I looked for hey so may my beast like folly learn at least the patience of a beast
• 33:00
  among the sheep I like a sheep of strayed I watch the manger when my lord is laid
• 33:09
  oh that my buying nature would thence win some woolly innocence
• 33:19
  that's a fabulous poem win dance yeah yeah um Malcolm you mentioned that he also has a more
• 33:27
  serious riff on this in his thinking is about Milton's ode yeah it's kind of very curious
• 33:35
  thing I don't know I've got a month so so Milton as you know wrote a poem called Ode on the
• 33:45
  morning of Christ's nativity which is a long beautiful I'm just hoping I've got the the Lewis
• 33:52
  premiere I had it marked but um so it's a long beautiful poem which starts off in spend
• 34:00
  serious terms of and asks to come ahead of the magey and be at the stable and then um and then
• 34:09
  it moves to a different meter a rather beautiful lyrical meter it was the winter wild when the
• 34:14
  heaven-born child I mean Lee Ratt and it it it has the idea that uh that when Christ was born this
• 34:24
  is Milton has this early idea it was a classical idea that that that there was a moment when
• 34:31
  Christ was born when everything was completely still when the angel sang and proclaimed peace
• 34:37
  that there was peace that every war ceased every for a moment every spear was held in the hand and
• 34:45
  not released and it was the turn of the tide everything was going to change from here and all over
• 34:52
  all over the empire so the story went people as it were paused for brass it breath here I mean so
• 34:59
  Lewis wrote this rather extraordinary poem the turn of the tide in which he not only imagines the
• 35:06
  world still but he imagines a wave as it were of breathless stillness is it you know this is the
• 35:13
  turn this is the moment when the creator from beyond all things enters the creation and the entire
• 35:19
  creation is thus transparent and can that be the same again I just give you a few phrases of it
• 35:23
  because I think it's it starts and ends in Bethlehem it's a poem that starts in Bethlehem goes out
• 35:28
  to the furthest ends of the cosmos and then comes back to Bethlehem I'll just I'll just
• 35:33
  give you the opening in the closing the Bethlehem that's because they're really beautiful
• 35:38
  breathless was the air over Bethlehem black and bare with the fields hard as granite the clouds
• 35:46
  hedges stiff with ice the sedge in the vice of the pool like pointed rods and the deathly stillness
• 35:53
  spread from Bethlehem it was shed wider each moment on the land through rampant or wall into
• 35:59
  camp into all stole the hush the tones were to stand and he goes out now reposes there's a complete
• 36:06
  stillness and he imagines this stillness as deathly like people are thinking is this it time has
• 36:12
  stopped for a second is this the end the cosmos is coming to an end and that's where it's deathly
• 36:20
  it's breathless and there's one sense of course in which it is the old order is coming to its end
• 36:27
  and then he goes right out he imagines great salamanders in the sun with brandishes they run
• 36:32
  tails like the americans in size were stunned by it and then they're all everything is completely
• 36:39
  still and they wonder if this is the beginning of the entropy of the unworking of everything
• 36:45
  the death had almost come the tide lay motionless at ab and then there's a gap in the poet
• 36:52
  and he picks up the thread again it's like a literally a pause of blomp
• 36:57
  like a stab at the movement over crab and bowman over maiden line came the shock of returning life
• 37:04
  the start and burning pang at heart setting galleagues he's to tingle and rock and the
• 37:09
  Lord's dead to breathe and the swords were sheve and a rustling and a relaxing began with rumour
• 37:15
  of noise of the resuming joys i mean on the nerves of the universe it ran then pulsing into
• 37:21
  space with delicate dulcet pace came a music this is from the Milton Aude it built in says you know
• 37:27
  bring out e crystal about spheres once bless our human ears if you have power to touch our senses
• 37:33
  so you know so now the music is coming a music infinitely small and clear but it swelled and
• 37:39
  drew near and held all worlds in the sharpens of its goal and now divinely deep and allowed it
• 37:44
  with a sweet quivering and inebriating sound wonderful and so it comes there's great
• 37:50
  revel and mirth enjoying all the spheres and then the poem ends like this so death lay in a rest
• 38:00
  but at Bethlehem the blessed nothing greater could be heard that a dry wind in the thorn
• 38:09
  the cry of one newborn and cattle in storm as they stood but of course the one newborn has a
• 38:19
  capital that's wonderful kind of out from the moment in the stable to the end of the cosmos and
• 38:26
  then back to the dry wind and just the cry of the babe but everything has changed i think what's
• 38:32
  extraordinary about that is that's not a voice I associate with C.S. Lewis
• 38:40
  the first one the nativity with the I calling himself an ass is totally something you yeah
• 38:47
  totally in in his you know willhouse but that I think it's quite almost like a way to read that
• 38:52
  again it's great I mean he's partly under Milton he's allowing himself a meltonic moment but
• 38:57
  also there's another side I wrote the chapter on Lewis as a poet for the for the Cambridge
• 39:02
  Companion so I spent some time really soaking myself in Lewis's poetry and benefited from that
• 39:09
  enormously but one of the things I became aware of is that if you want to know where all the deep
• 39:16
  rather mystical imminent god bar fieldian stuff went in Lewis when you didn't quite put it in
• 39:24
  the more orthodox book the answer is he went into the poetry he's very Owen Barfield very sort of
• 39:30
  original participation and final participation and organic unity Lewis the poet allows himself
• 39:38
  a much more a much richer sense of you know lose the theologian is often it pains to to
• 39:46
  emphasize the transcendence of god and the and the failure of every worldly thing in respect of
• 39:50
  god's transcendence but Lewis the poet allows himself a kind of cosmic mysticism which I think
• 39:57
  is wrong and lovely thank you that's lovely so leaving CS Lewis in his mystical space that's
• 40:07
  this is a good moment to turn to middle earth now when I first thought of this my initial reaction was
• 40:14
  um okay middle earth doesn't have Christmas or doesn't have a Christmas style festival but actually
• 40:21
  cat has put me right so cat in talking in the legendarium that side of him where do you go to
• 40:28
  celebrate midwinter festival well um yeah it's not immediately obvious perhaps but there are
• 40:38
  middle earth does actually have a fairly extensive um you'll tide or winter festival
• 40:43
  tradition um and these are touched on or perhaps a few different traditions but they seem to me to be
• 40:49
  sort of linked um they you'll find them touched upon never really sort of brought out particularly
• 40:57
  in the hobbit in the Lord of the Rings and its appendices and a couple of other places too
• 41:02
  so for example you have to delve into the appendices sometimes in appendix d we learn that the
• 41:09
  shire celebrates two yule days which are the last and first days of the olden new years
• 41:16
  these days were counted as outside the months so the first month of the new year was named after
• 41:22
  you and the last month was for you and this is a quote in full talking ads yule tide was six days long
• 41:31
  including the last three days and first three days of each year and since the shire calendar is
• 41:38
  based upon the new manorian calendar known as kings reckoning i think we can probably safely assume
• 41:43
  that some sort of midwinter festival was also celebrated in gondor but that's you know that's an
• 41:48
  assumption anyway so in the hobbit um when Gandalf and Bilbo returning from the lonely mountain
• 41:56
  right at the end of the book um they are accompanied by Bjorn and they stay at Bjorn's house
• 42:04
  um for some time on their return journey and celebrate yule there um and it says yule tide was
• 42:11
  warm and merry there and men came from far and wide to feast at Bjorn's bidding
• 42:17
  which i think would probably be rather nice because there'd be plenty of roast meats and honey
• 42:22
  and at the the end of the return of the king Frodo and this is after the scouring of the shire
• 42:28
  Frodo and his friends are delighted to discover stores of goods food drink in tobacco which
• 42:35
  have been stashed away by saramans ruffians and hidden in various places like the holes at
• 42:40
  nickel delving oh and in the old quarries at scurry i presume it's scurry rather than scary
• 42:46
  so that there was a great deal better cheer that yule than anyone had hoped for
• 42:50
  so the hobbits i think we can safely assume have a pretty good time at the yule there are a heron
• 42:58
  it turns out also celebrate yule but the only description i can find of it is an appendix A
• 43:04
  of the Lord of the Rings and it can hardly be typical at least i hope not um because during the
• 43:09
  long winter in the time of Helm Hammerhand Helm's deep was besieged by the Dunlendings um and we
• 43:17
  have in Helm's deep that there was a great hunger after yule Helm's son Hammer is lost in the snow
• 43:23
  after a foray and Helm goes mad with grief and just in white would stalk like a snow troll into the
• 43:30
  caps of his enemies and slay men with his hands the Dunlendings said if you could find no food he
• 43:36
  ate men and there's a little quote here from appendix A Helm had a great horn and it was marked
• 43:46
  that before he sallied forth he would blow a blast upon it that echoed in the deep and then so
• 43:51
  great a fear fell on his enemies instead of gathering to take him or kill him they fled away
• 43:57
  one night men heard the horn blowing but Helm did not return in the morning there came a sunglean
• 44:03
  the first for long days and they saw white figure standing still on the dike alone
• 44:08
  there stood Helm dead as a stone but his knees were unbent yet men said that the horn was still
• 44:14
  heard at times in the deep and the wrath of Helm would walk among the foes of Rohan and kill men
• 44:20
  with fear so not terribly Christmassy story but it wasn't you there is a tradition of Christmas
• 44:26
  ghosts there is also a tradition of Christmas ghosts and I think that's a pretty good Christmas
• 44:31
  ghost in fact it's all very northern and sargo-like which is unsurprising if you think that winter
• 44:37
  festivals do tend to be about celebrating and anticipating the return of the sun and the rebirth
• 44:42
  of the year in the cold dark season and obviously the further north you go probably the more the
• 44:47
  more important these festivals have become and so quite uniquely I would say from middle earth
• 44:54
  the dwarfs winter festival celebrates a named individual durin's day occurs on the first day of
• 45:01
  the last moon of autumn on the threshold in winter and the legend tells us this is this is
• 45:07
  relying upon the appendices again tells us how durin slept alone until in the depths of time he
• 45:14
  was awakened he's the great ancestor of the dwarfs and lived so long he was known as Durin the
• 45:19
  Deathless yet in the end he died before the elder days had passed and his tomb was in Kazadun but
• 45:26
  his line never failed and five times that air was born so like to his forefather that he received
• 45:32
  the name of Durin he was indeed held by the dwarfs to be the Deathless that returned and so I think
• 45:39
  here like Christmas in Durin's day we have a winter festival that hangs upon a single personage
• 45:48
  who died and yet is reborn just a thought that's interesting yeah and my final the final
• 45:57
  example that I could find which there may be others but this was this was the the result of my
• 46:03
  scouring of the legendary money well I'm not sure this isn't the legendary but in the book of lost
• 46:07
  tales the owls of toll aresia celebrate a winter festival called Turohami or log drawing which
• 46:15
  apparently involve games in the snow the gathering of logs on the slaves songs drinking and the
• 46:20
  telling of tales now do you know I am so thrilled that I think there can't be a Tolkien fan out
• 46:27
  there listening to this who won't feel they've not got their money's worth because I've never
• 46:33
  I've never heard all of that put together quite so no I never have yeah I remember you you
• 46:39
  with Bae on a mountain absolutely right with Bae on the and you is really important I mean obviously
• 46:44
  there's no way that I mean Tolkien would never have done I never in a million years have done
• 46:49
  what Lewis did and introduce the word Christmas because the whole magic of Tolkien's
• 46:56
  thing could persist on completely letting that secondary world be itself now obviously
• 47:02
  Tolkien's are deeply deeply versed and and profoundly faithful Christian and therefore
• 47:08
  the great themes of light and darkness the great themes of resurrection indeed
• 47:14
  and of course the profound theme I mean if I were to associate it with the the the order of
• 47:20
  the ring certain with any kind of arc of of the great Christian it's much more about
• 47:30
  good Friday and then eventually you know the the eucotastrophe of resurrection I mean
• 47:36
  the epic towards the end I mean the whole epic if you think about it is an epic of letting go
• 47:44
  that was strikes me as being extraordinary thing if you think of how Tolkien had within his grasp
• 47:50
  and in bedding in his imagination the mythology the entire mythology of the west and the north for
• 47:56
  sure and lots of others as well and all the great quests I think without exception somebody
• 48:02
  may correct me on this but all the great quests associated with the treasure or a magical object
• 48:08
  of any kind are quests of acquisition you know Jason's got to go and get the gold and fleece people
• 48:15
  have got to go and get the apples from the garden of their disparities the hero is always going out
• 48:21
  to acquire something and that something brings with it magical powers and makes the hero more of a
• 48:26
  hero gives them life or whatever it is all that brings restoration to their kingdom
• 48:32
  Tolkien is unique in writing an epic of letting go and that's why it's such a prophetic book now
• 48:40
  for the the age of consumption an age that's consuming itself to death an age that's relying on
• 48:44
  the acquisition of various kinds of quasi-magical technologies just to extend life but only
• 48:51
  spreading it out like butter spread there were too much bread you know whereas the heart of
• 48:56
  this thing is the recognition that the real liberation will come from a renunciation from a letting go
• 49:01
  I mean I think theologically that's to do with Kenosis I think it's to do with you know they
• 49:05
  was founded in four week with God he did not cling to he emptied himself but the whole ethos of it
• 49:11
  is an ethos of emptying rather than filling which makes it less appropriate to a Christmas thing
• 49:20
  but very appropriate to to to the mysteries of of good Friday and Easter I think that's where I'd
• 49:28
  nobody it is it is appropriate to Christmas I mean it's not appropriate to Santa Claus and
• 49:32
  presents but it's appropriate to the idea of God taking on human flesh as a tiny
• 49:39
  oh absolutely that's and that's completely what you see in the Nativity plays and everything
• 49:45
  that's yeah what they would all regard as the message of Christmas I'm sure both Tolkien and us
• 49:51
  low-hearball convergence woo you know yeah yeah absolutely no no there's nothing I wonder about you
• 49:57
  you mentioned my doing a poem actually this might be really a appropriate moment to throw a poem
• 50:02
  in if I may oh off you go for a moment yeah um I wrote a poem sometime ago called it was
• 50:09
  published in my single what called descent and um I obviously I because it's a poem printed in
• 50:15
  the page I had to spell the word descent and I've spelled it d-e-s-e-e-n-t because it's about
• 50:21
  help empty this descent but I wanted when I read it people to hear the other sense of descent
• 50:26
  to descent from something and the idea here is that just as talking reverses the legendary so there's
• 50:33
  a sense in which in my view the the the Christian story changes the great sort of
• 50:41
  classical late pagan anti late pagan antiquity the kind of classical mountain of the Olympian gods
• 50:46
  the gods on high and the religious quest is being an ascent um and and the gods being in every
• 50:53
  respect superior to human beings and you know they are the immortals we are the mortals they
• 50:59
  they are they are perfect and flawless and we we are subject to changing to catch so I wrote this
• 51:05
  poem which just has a series of contrasts in a sense between the religious the the religions
• 51:13
  around to which god as it were in the act of incarnation says I beg to differ I descent
• 51:20
  but so so this is it it's quite a short poem um it's written in English suffix which is um
• 51:27
  a meter George Herbert like to use and the reason I chose it is that it's four stress lines
• 51:33
  but the last line of each quattrain is just four words so it diminishes descent
• 51:41
  they sought to soar into the skies those classic gods of high renown for lofty pride aspires
• 51:47
  to rise but you came down you dropped down from the mountain's sheer for sure the eagle for the dove
• 51:57
  the other gods demanded fear but you gave love where chiseled marble seems to freeze their abstract
• 52:06
  and perfected form compassion brought you to your knees your blood was warm they called for blood
• 52:15
  in sacrifice and victims on their alters glad when no one else could pay the price you died
• 52:23
  instead they towered above our mortal plain dismissed this restless flesh with scorn aloof
• 52:33
  from birth and death and pain but you were born born to these burdens born by all born with us all
• 52:46
  astride the grave weak to be with us when we fall and strong to save
• 52:58
  that's lovely thank you so much Malcolm I just I adore here we repurchase just wonderful thank you
• 53:04
  um so just to finish with with Tolkien before we move on to the whole question of fantasy and
• 53:11
  Christmas in wider frame um I had a little ruffle around in things that weren't part of the
• 53:17
  strictly speaking the legendarium and remembered that in the smith of wooden major
• 53:24
  the beginning of that story takes part of the big cake special cake being made for the feast
• 53:32
  of the good children which sounds like the quintessential christmas thing if ever there was one
• 53:38
  perhaps more like the st. Nicholas festival that a lot of the continental countries
• 53:45
  celebrate at the beginning of December so that I think had an element of Christmasy about it but of
• 53:51
  course you know the the big one is the fabulous the father Christmas letters which is edited by
• 54:03
  uh Bailey Tolkien who is Christopher Tolkien's second wife uh I hadn't actually looked that up until
• 54:08
  today um I've got I think this must be a first edition actually my family was my husband's family
• 54:15
  were friendly with Tolkien back in the 20s so we always got like first editions of everything in
• 54:20
  the family because um which is great but I pulled this off the shelf um and as you can see this is
• 54:28
  based on a family tradition in the Tolkien household where every year Tolkien would well no
• 54:36
  father Christmas would write a letter to the children um what I find fascinating about this is you
• 54:43
  see all sorts of Tolkien skills coming into it his skills as a calligrapher his skills as a
• 54:50
  artist his humour um he had quite a broad sense of humour some people found it bit irritating but
• 54:56
  actually it really suits the kids sense of humour people falling down and you know having accidents
• 55:03
  and all that kind of thing but as you read it what is really interesting is how it gets more
• 55:09
  and more complicated in the various worlds that are breaking into the sort of you know father
• 55:15
  Christmas's workshop and there's a in the middle of the 30s because each letter is um dated
• 55:21
  there's a big battle with the goblins it's almost as if Tolkien cannot help himself he has to
• 55:27
  go there and then the latter part the um some of the letters are actually from the chief elf who's
• 55:34
  called Ilbereth yeah so it gets very Tolkien-esque towards you and you'll be pleased um
• 55:41
  there was a rather splendid picture here of um uh the polar bear in his bath
• 55:46
  oh I remember that my mother got that and started reading them to us and and sending we were
• 55:53
  quite old about him but you know um and uh sent one and the polar bear in his bath was a great
• 55:58
  favourite you know how seldom yes I think what polar bear generally is a character he is absolutely
• 56:06
  he's the strongest one of all of them and you get his um you get his runes at the end and his real
• 56:12
  name so do read on to the end but I think what's quite poignant I'd love to see an adaptation of this
• 56:19
  Tolkien and state if you're listening let's let someone do this um I'd love to see an adaptation
• 56:27
  of this where it ends where it ends because it ends in 1939 and there's this very um it's
• 56:36
  sort of mournful but poignant feeling of what happens at the end of Christmas and I think
• 56:43
  captures that mood really well um and he's telling that his children what's happening in the world
• 56:49
  fire his own story of Father Christmas um saying I expect to remember that some years ago we had trouble
• 56:56
  with the goblins and we thought we had settled it well it broke out again this autumn worse than
• 57:03
  his been for centuries and that's the last Father Christmas letter um so poignant
• 57:10
  so he was so good with those you know because he used to he used to um you know put the envelopes
• 57:17
  and make the lovely stamps and then all the polar everything and eventually he he recruited the
• 57:23
  postman and got the postman actually to deliver the letters in person to the children genuinely
• 57:32
  from the proper postbag which might be for some you know so in the last section of that um of what
• 57:41
  we're talking about today I want to have a brief look at how Christmas appears in fantasy but also
• 57:48
  what we've done as writers with Christmas and the or the holiday season shall we say and I was
• 57:55
  thinking about just a very quick look at the famous Christmas stories aside from the Christian
• 58:02
  narratives that appear on our screens every year loads of them are fantasy you mentioned the
• 58:08
  Christmas ghost story well of course up there is the Christmas Carol yeah yeah I try and read that
• 58:14
  every year it's absolutely my favourite because it captures the heart of that sort of sense of
• 58:19
  redemption and um the generosity but also you also mentioned the snow queen which again
• 58:29
  has not only the snowy landscapes but the idea of heart melting literally the heart melting the
• 58:35
  shard of ice melting um and then of course the nutcracker I've done an adaptation for kids of
• 58:42
  the nutcracker for um an educational reader and for that I went back to the original
• 58:49
  Hoffman tale which is much more interesting than the ballet the ballet kind of any does a tiny
• 58:55
  fragment of the story but the the thing about the Hoffman tale is the it's exactly Lucy's dilemma
• 59:04
  that she has when she comes back from the wardrobe no one believes her and the nutcracker encapsulates
• 59:10
  that uh the same within that story the fact that no one believes the heroine that she's had all
• 59:16
  these adventures so it's really worth going back to the original nutcracker tale as well as going
• 59:22
  to the ballet which you know as a another pleasure I'm sure but do you have any favourite Christmas
• 59:28
  stories that we haven't yet mentioned particularly those of a fantasy um genre that you bring out every
• 59:35
  year well um the box of delights is my absolute must have must must must read again um book of
• 59:45
  Christmas um and of course it's just I mean no sure most people who who listen to this will
• 59:51
  who are listening to this will actually have come across it if not the book itself for the BBC
• 59:56
  adaptation which is which is delightful um but there's Lucy Boston's the children of green
• 1:00:02
  no which oh yes yeah which is for anybody who doesn't know is it's about an imaginative little boy
• 1:00:09
  called tolly who goes to say with his grandmother in a house in the fenns or near the fenns who makes
• 1:00:14
  playfellows out of the ghosts of the children who used to live there this is based on the man the
• 1:00:19
  manner at Henningford Gray was Lucy Boston's own house a marvelous place and of course as Christmas
• 1:00:25
  approaches it just gets more and more and more Christmassy but also with the assistance of his
• 1:00:31
  his very benign little ghostly playfellows he they have to encounter the demon utri in the garden
• 1:00:35
  so there's darkness as well I always loved that book I can't just to just to pick up in case
• 1:00:42
  people haven't come across the box of delights particularly if you're um watching from America
• 1:00:47
  it's by a writer called John Maysfield and it was originally published in 1935 so it's you know
• 1:00:53
  he's a contemporary or just a little bit before in a sense um and yeah and a bit like the the
• 1:01:03
  green no stories you mentioned the box of delight definitely has the darkness as well as the light
• 1:01:08
  it's a battle between the two absolutely so does the gospel I think seems to me especially in
• 1:01:14
  Matthew you know the point about the light in Christmas is that it's surrounded by darkness
• 1:01:21
  just as the point about the warmth and the coziness and the feasting and the rich fruit it's because
• 1:01:26
  it's cold and snowy outside yeah so if you just do something which is nothing but fluffy
• 1:01:31
  niceness it'll go no way you know there has to be danger yes there has to be a resistance to the
• 1:01:36
  darkness all the best Christmas stories have got that yes yes I agree I think that's it the green
• 1:01:42
  note I just to say the green no stories are are absolutely fabulous that's stunning I absolutely
• 1:01:48
  stunning yeah I had a wonderful adventure in relation to them in that um when I became and I
• 1:01:53
  came you know I I was an English teacher for a while as my my first job and I happened to
• 1:01:59
  be teaching in St Ives near Huntington not far from Hemingford Gray where the house is but I knew
• 1:02:04
  nothing of that I had read the the the the the the green no stories at the same time that I read
• 1:02:09
  the nanny ones and therefore it was all in the same world and I was talking to our head of
• 1:02:13
  the English department there and saying you know I want to do the children of green known he said oh
• 1:02:18
  well you want to go go over and um go over to the house then and have a word with Lucy Buston I
• 1:02:23
  can give you an introduction and he might as well have said by the way the wardrobe is in my
• 1:02:29
  it was exactly and that's so I did and um I was just thrilled um because the house is just as
• 1:02:35
  it and Peter Buston's lovely drawings and Lucy Buston was exactly as I'd imagined Mrs. Oldman
• 1:02:40
  and in fact I'm very by great good fortune came to know her quite well and at one point um she
• 1:02:45
  she asked me if I would stay there for a while and be here in Manuensis she was writing um poetry about
• 1:02:51
  a wonderful poetry at that time but I just got engaged to Maddie and we were we were being engaged
• 1:02:56
  made we were about to get married so I I said to her my my my my day you have a rival and she's 90
• 1:03:04
  uh you know I've frozen I don't know if um oh yeah you're still getting welcomed don't worry okay
• 1:03:11
  so she's anyway so so Maggie came over and met her and we had a lovely time walking in the
• 1:03:15
  rose garden how wonderful yeah I regard her as one of the great writers yeah she she's a marvellous
• 1:03:23
  writing absolutely marvellous um but I have a couple more so this is um Liam Garfield's response to
• 1:03:29
  the Christmas Carol Mr. Colbert's ghost and it's well worth reading I think and um can I go on I've
• 1:03:36
  got yeah well yeah because I think we should always leave people with the reading list okay
• 1:03:39
  absolutely this is very new Catherine Christian Catherine fishes the clockwork crow is absolutely
• 1:03:47
  enchanting there are two sequels and it follows the adventures of a little girl a Victorian orphan
• 1:03:53
  who takes winter train ride to an old Welsh mansion where she has to outwit the dangerous Welsh
• 1:03:59
  fairies the tulith tag um that's how you pronounce them with the aid of the clockwork crow and I
• 1:04:07
  highly recommend them I think it's always good to remember that we don't stop with talking in Lewis
• 1:04:12
  we're going on to look at you writing just to um we're going to hop into Harry Potter just briefly
• 1:04:19
  because of course I think there is a big strong association still with Harry Potter and Christmas
• 1:04:25
  thanks to the fact that the uh JK Rowling does a school year and school year in features Christmas
• 1:04:31
  heavily so of course you've got all the images and I think her use of it shows the side that you
• 1:04:39
  either do the full-on celebration but you also use it to contrast the loneliness of the character
• 1:04:46
  and that I think works particularly well with Harry when he's outside of that's the bit which I
• 1:04:51
  think is most poignant and when he's outside of everybody else's celebration so if you're thinking
• 1:04:56
  about using it if anyone's listening to this and is um doing a fantasy world where Christmas fits
• 1:05:01
  that's a really good use of it is to do that yes absolutely welcome and Catherine I'm now going to
• 1:05:07
  put you on the spot as writers to find out um well A you could recommend one of your books as a
• 1:05:13
  Christmas present if you want half I think you should definitely do that but Malcolm you've written a
• 1:05:18
  whole advent book which I actually spent one advent doing I think last year uh so please tell us
• 1:05:24
  about that yeah so this is uh called um waiting on the word a poem a day for advent Christmas in
• 1:05:33
  epiphany and it's an anthology I mean it's mostly classic poems and it has one to my enemies but
• 1:05:39
  what I do is I give you the poem but then I write a very short reflective essay I find that people
• 1:05:44
  find it quite helpful to have something opened out for them and I try and take the sort of advent journey
• 1:05:52
  which in a sense of course starts really once thinking of the advent of Christ Christmas I mean
• 1:05:56
  there are other senses of advent too but if we're once thinking of the advent of Christ Christmas it
• 1:06:00
  has to start with the annunciation really and Mary's various preparations so I have some annunciation
• 1:06:07
  I have the the great Milton poem in there that I that that that Lewis Marif done so much I have my own
• 1:06:13
  sequence um of seven poems on the great advent antiphon to the seven great o's which I love which are
• 1:06:23
  these kind of mystical titles of Christ um I have a poem of my own about about Christmas day and
• 1:06:30
  so on in it um but I then go on into uh into epiphany and uh you know take the story forward and
• 1:06:42
  I would have poem about the wise men coming um and I sometimes chairs and secular poems as well not
• 1:06:49
  just don't do directly religious ones that are I think observations of the season that just
• 1:06:55
  enter into the spirits of the whole thing there's a wonderful poem by the contemporary poet
• 1:06:59
  gravel end up about watching moons change in the in the winter sky and and wanting to give each
• 1:07:06
  of these moons in their different phases to his wife you know and that you know having to sort of give
• 1:07:10
  her the poem with the moons in them instead um so yeah I really enjoy doing it and it seems to sort of
• 1:07:19
  continue to kind of live a life of its own I'd also give me a chance to to bring in some
• 1:07:24
  poets who I think have been unjustly neglected I don't think I've got a couple of poems in here
• 1:07:28
  by Ruth Pitter who I think is a really fine poet uh was much admired by Lewis um it's a beautiful
• 1:07:35
  poem affair's mystical poem called a bird in the tree I've got here um so yeah it was very good
• 1:07:42
  good good fun to put together and um it seems to sort of have carried on with the life of its own
• 1:07:48
  and I what I did for people who enjoy reading it but would like to hear the poems that I had people
• 1:07:53
  have sometimes said to me it's nice if I read the poems so I have recorded all these poems and on
• 1:07:59
  my blog over the advent season in a sort of weekly post I post up the recordings of all that week's
• 1:08:05
  poems and the texts of them so people who are reading the book can sort of press up and then hear
• 1:08:10
  me recite the poem which sometimes happens it out of it okay well put a link to that in the show
• 1:08:16
  notes as they call it on these things um so people can find those cast now I've got your book here
• 1:08:23
  I'm gonna bring it in there we go um so this is a very good present for anybody who is remembering
• 1:08:32
  their childhood and their reading of um the Narnia stories in particular tell us a little bit
• 1:08:39
  about this and what what you cover well um so because I was so um so so passionate about the
• 1:08:47
  Narnia books and I was a little girl um I well I came to the end of them and I'm sure many of the
• 1:08:55
  children did this too um I wrote a book of my own stories about Narnia I was 9 10 that sort of age
• 1:09:04
  and that sort of got me writing that got me writing seriously I never really stopped writing after
• 1:09:09
  that I just carried on writing books I mean loads of unpublished manuscripts upstairs unpublished
• 1:09:14
  and unpublishable I should say um so Spareum has called what my own copy brought it's I think
• 1:09:23
  this may be back to front but it says from Spareum to Wardrobe travels in Narnia with my 9-year-old
• 1:09:29
  self um and um it's it's sort of productive of the gift of the silver chair that my mother gave me
• 1:09:37
  so long ago I suppose um so I looked at my I sort of explored my own childhood memories of
• 1:09:44
  reading the book which I remember very very clearly rather as Malcolm can often quite exactly where
• 1:09:50
  I was and what I was doing when I was reading the books for the first time but also I thought I'd
• 1:09:56
  would be interesting to sort of have a dialogue between myself as a child and myself now um and
• 1:10:03
  as an adult sort of tease out some of the threads from the extraordinarily rich tapestry of
• 1:10:09
  references that there was weaves into those books which we have touched upon I mean not just from
• 1:10:15
  Christianity but also from Plato Greek mythology fairy tales medieval literature Bunyan Milton
• 1:10:22
  you know George MacDonald you name it it just goes on and on and on and I I find that fascinating
• 1:10:28
  and um I think the book is reasonably readable so that's that's that's my most recent book um as far
• 1:10:37
  as myself as a as a novelist goes um this is a few years old now but it's called Dark Angels
• 1:10:44
  it was published by Harper Collins and it's a middle grade book for children and um do I
• 1:10:49
  it's it's basically it's a Christmas it's a Christmasly book it's it's called The Shadow Hunt in
• 1:10:54
  the United States um it's a winter book set set in the Welsh marches in the late 12th century
• 1:11:00
  and it begins in autumn and comes to Christmas climax of Snow, Danger, Ghost, Devils, Elves and
• 1:11:06
  Angels so have I got time to read a tiny bit yeah the beauty of this kind of format is that we don't
• 1:11:13
  have to cut to a commercial break or anything okay you can just kick in there's a bit um towards the
• 1:11:20
  end it's not the end you can see uh where my two characters there's a boy called Wolf and a girl
• 1:11:26
  called Nest and um for various reasons they've agreed to meet on the top of the tower of the
• 1:11:36
  Motton Bailey Castle Lamott Rouge which is where they both are living at the moment on Christmas morning
• 1:11:42
  because they've been told that if you go there on Christmas morning at sunrise you might be able
• 1:11:47
  to see the angels dancing in the sun so this is a bit where it goes a wolf sweat snow from the rail
• 1:11:55
  they leaned on it looking east every moment the colour in the sky grew stronger a vast cloud
• 1:12:01
  stood high over crow moor it flushed rows and peach and gold and began to brighten beyond colour
• 1:12:07
  into pure light out of nowhere a small wind ruffled their faces
• 1:12:13
  Christ does not assess Christ is born far below their feet a crock a cock crowed wild and shrill
• 1:12:20
  a goblet of fire two brights to look at rows over the rim of the world fields and woods leaped to life
• 1:12:26
  rays of light struck across the valley and the snow-crusted edge of the rail where they leaned
• 1:12:31
  turned all to diamonds a lump came into wolf's throat poised here on the tower high above the
• 1:12:38
  world his hard decisions and troubles seemed tiny and unimportant nest grabbed his hand
• 1:12:45
  oh wolf she breathed look above the joyful blazing disc of the sun the sky was like
• 1:12:50
  hammered silver white sparks appeared in it like morning stars wolf squinted between the bars
• 1:12:57
  of his fingers far far away leaving streaks and curls of fire the angels danced like a flock of birds
• 1:13:04
  before the sun that immeasurably distant winds flashing so that's a christmas
• 1:13:09
  lovely thank you so I suppose I should now say now it's like completely different because I
• 1:13:14
  was thinking I don't have a christmas book and I realized I actually do oh good um one of my I
• 1:13:19
  write under three names and one of them is jost sterling and also published by Harper Collins I
• 1:13:25
  have a murder mystery at christmas is that is that traditional and it's actually inspired by
• 1:13:35
  the area in which Tolkien's house is actually situated even though we didn't manage to get the house
• 1:13:40
  I'm fascinated by that area and or the arrival of particularly Russian oligarchs buying up the
• 1:13:48
  property around there which is partly why it was so expensive and I think maybe it was me working
• 1:13:53
  things through um I've written a murder mystery set in houses around there but the presiding
• 1:13:58
  fantasy genius is actually Alice in Wonderland um the connection being to Lewis Carroll uh and in
• 1:14:06
  fact that's how you solve the puzzle is knowing what happens in what order in Alice in Wonderland
• 1:14:13
  so that's called Red House but there are dead bodies so um it's you know it's an adult novel
• 1:14:20
  rather than a christmas family read thank you so much Malcolm and Catherine for um doing this
• 1:14:28
  chat with us today I have really learned a lot and I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you about
• 1:14:35
  always winter and never christmas because I think we've actually tippled over from the always winter
• 1:14:40
  into christmas and the crocuses I like your word I like your word tipple there you have a season
• 1:14:47
  you tipped over it but if it's christmas you should definitely tipple definitely yes so thank
• 1:14:52
  you very much and it was very kind for you to give us all this time so thank you and goodbye thank
• 1:14:59
  you for enjoying thank you very much we've enjoyed it I certainly have yes I have to thank you