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C.S. Lewis's Oxford · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today
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  I am joined by a friend and but very distinguished academic Professor Simon Horobin. Now Simon
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  is the Professor of English Language and Literature at Modeling College. Simon are you talking to us from
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  Modeling College because your background does look very you know worthy of Modeling? Yeah no
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  well spotted yeah I'm sitting in I mean if you've seen pictures of Lewis in his rooms I'm in that same
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  building but just two staircases along from him in a room that's sort of identical to the main
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  building room that he had but it's got a mirror image of it so yeah that's the background you can see.
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  So if you're listening to this rather than watching it there's a beautifully decorated paneled room behind
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  without the smoke stains which I imagine would have been in. Yeah big Oxford it's called the new building
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  which means it's extremely old and one way you look out on the rest of the college and the other you
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  look out on the deer park but perhaps we might touch on that a bit later. The reason why Simon is
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  joining us today is because he has just published with the Bodian Library Publishing Service
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  a wonderful book called C. S. Lewis's Oxford and it's very much a title that says what it
• 1:35
  does in the book because it's all about C. S. Lewis's long history of living in Oxford.
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  Let's start with you Simon because you are actually holding the same position in the college
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  as C. S. Lewis held so yeah big shoes to fill. How did you come to be interested in C. S. Lewis?
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  I was wondering about this having sort of known you for a few years now I was wondering if it's because
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  you're you know in the same role or was it through your academic career because you teach
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  in a very similar area the students coming to Oxford now or maybe as a child you read Narnia and
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  went through the wardrobe which is it? It's actually all of those things but I suppose
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  it starts with reading the Narnia books as a child I still have the copies that I read you know back
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  when I was I guess 10 years old and you know that so that that was my introduction to C. S. Lewis
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  but then it's sort of slightly less sort of in a slightly more unusual way of getting into it
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  I suppose the next things I read were the allegory of love the discarded image which is still one
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  of my favorite Lewis books today because it's it's such a great introduction to medieval
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  nomenational studies show I was read those when I was a student and so I already knew Lewis quite well by
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  the time I came to work here at Mordland but of course you can't you know sit in the new building
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  and walk around the college without getting more interested in those and being acutely conscious
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  of of his legacy and and also when I arrived people like the C. S. Lewis Society would write and ask
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  me to come and give a talk and and I remember the first time they did I wrote back and said I didn't
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  really know very much about C. S. Lewis so I thought I better find out and so that that is then
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  the sort of next stage and then I then started looking into his his more into his biography and
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  to his life specifically at Mordland and and I guess that's that's how the book kind of grew out
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  of that of that experience so it is absolutely the perfect book to have on hand if you come to Oxford
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  to visit you know if you're a Lewis fan you've got to get this book but I don't think you need to
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  be in Oxford to enjoy it I think it's very enjoyable as a virtual visit through the pages of this
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  book and it also gives a great insight into Lewis himself got wonderful picture of him on the back
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  in a room very much like the one Simon is currently occupying um so do you want to tell us a little
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  bit about how you decided to structure the book because I should also mention it doesn't only
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  deal with Oxford just you know yeah somewhat controversial it has a chapter called Cambridge
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  but then you know we can't pretend that he didn't actually go there but yeah and partly the
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  structure so it is structured around I mean you could do it as a kind of walking tour of Oxford
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  as you've suggested and that's partly because during the pandemic when we could only meet outside
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  in groups I started doing CS Lewis tours um for student groups and for others and um so that
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  partly is is the origin of the book is is sort of walking people around Mordellin and pointing
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  things out and then working our way down the high street and you go past the Eastgate hotel which is
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  where Lewis and Tolkien would meet on a Monday morning to to read bits of Lord of the Rings or
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  the great divorce to each other and then you go um past university college where Lewis began his
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  academic studies you know we always think of him as as being at Mordellin but he started out
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  at what's called UNIF as a student of classics so it's a bit different to you know now he
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  think of him as an English tutor then he was a classicist of philosopher and also you go past
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  met in college where Tolkien himself was when they were meeting with each other and and so that
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  that's sort of the origin of it and why I thought I would structure it around these places and
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  it's partly because places is so central to Lewis because you know I mean actually of course he
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  spent most of his adult life in Oxford and even when he went to Cambridge he didn't really leave
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  Oxford in the sense that you know he commuted and spent time times and weekdays living in college
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  in Cambridge but he came back to Oxford weekends and and the places that like the particularly the
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  pubs I suppose are really important the eagle and child has a chapter to itself because of
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  you know the inks being so associated with it you know those kinds of institutions places and of
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  course the people that he encounters and meets there it just seemed to me so central to what makes
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  Lewis Lewis you know to his writing and his thinking and just so if you've not been to Oxford
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  people might not realize just how close those places are so when Simon's talking about
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  going past Eastgate Hotel and then you know if we are talking about a minute walk
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  up at one it's really really close a very densely um densely important set of locations um for
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  for Oxford and for our Northern Ireland listeners we should mention that Northern Ireland does get
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  a mention too because we shouldn't forget that you never really took the Northern Irish out of
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  a CS Lewis either did even being in Oxford he retained a strong connection with his place of birth
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  so um when I was reading this having lived in Oxford for decades and knowing the places
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  so I was able to sort of follow it very very closely but the one thing which was new to me
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  and new to all the biographies I've read of CS Lewis was the college details of Mordlin
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  now I was actually a Mordlin postgrad for a few years when I was doing my doctorate but I didn't
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  get to know it in the same way as you as a professor do and I felt reading this section it could only be
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  written by an insider so do you want to mention some of the odd little things about the Mordlin
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  experience and perhaps you might want to go on to talk about whether or not what's the same
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  and what's changed in Mordlin since CS Lewis's time bearing in mind someone listening to this
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  might be thinking to apply in future we don't want to put them off no I think that's right and I
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  think that's partly what's bird me to write the book is that you know there are many excellent
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  biographies of CS Lewis and so it only makes sense to write something where I feel that there's
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  something I could add to that and I think you're right but having that college angle sitting in
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  a room just like his and you know sort of teaching in the way that he taught the course that he
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  taught more or less and going around the various parts of the college did give me a kind of an
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  insider's view of what that was like and some of the weird kinds of traditions that you know
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  they actually still go on today you know there's he talks and surprised by joy about the moment
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  that he became a fellow here in 1925 and how strange it was he found it when he was lining up
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  in the president's lodgings and then he he had the kind of the Latin admission ceremony and then
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  went round and shook the hands of all of the fellows at the time who all said I wish you joy
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  to which he made no reply and of course that was very significant for him because the word joy
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  already had had an importance for him which it then took on even greater significance and
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  you know for for a number of reasons surprised by joy is being is obviously one joy David
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  but you know that's strangeness of that ceremony well that's exactly the ceremony that I went through
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  when I came here as a photo 18 years ago so there are all these connections and
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  and there are some nice kind of objects that are still around in the archives which
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  which I talk about in the book so for instance we still use the college weighing scales
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  on special dinners where guests who come to dinner are given the option not so many people take
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  it up these days are being weighed I don't know if that was active in in your day Julia but
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  I was having a child at the time having my daughter Lucy so I was having enough weighing at the
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  right yeah yeah yeah because it is something that happens at graduate dinners but
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  but yeah so he appears in the college weights book somewhat unfortunately for
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  us he appears sort of early on in his time here at Mordelin and then just before he left the
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  Cambridge in 1954 so you can exactly work out how much weight he puts on
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  during the period he was here so there's that that kind of thing there's also the college betting
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  book which again is still active in the SCR where fellows might fall out over some sort of
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  obstruce fact and decide that because they can't decide who's right they're going to
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  stake a bottle of port on the outcome of it and there's an entry by Lewis in the college betting
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  but where he's had a wager with CE Stevens the ancient history tutor about whether the word
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  Eros appears in home as Odyssey and they stake a bottle of port on the outcome and of course
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  Lewis turns out to be the correct and wins the bottle off but you know these kind of quaint
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  traditions but still active today but you know we can sort of trace them back to Lewis's day and see
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  him taking part in them I think to emphasis really emphasizes how masculine the environment was
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  in his day compared to now I mean obviously I was there years ago it was it would change I don't
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  know when it went mixed in the 80s maybe when did 70s but yeah exactly what I was going to say is
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  that the big change between Lewis's day and today is I think the admission of women this was
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  very exclusively male world in Lewis's time although one of the things that I found which had
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  surprised me really was how many female students he taught and that's partly because going through
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  the archives of a number of the women's colleges I found references to him being paid for tuition
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  or writing reports on students and so and that was particularly during the Second World War
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  where lots of the male students of course we're not here but also you know before that as well
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  so although it was particularly a male dominated well the well-women students in the
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  college in the ladies colleges and they did come in pairs rather than singly because of course
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  you know they need to be shampooned and but uh but it's but you know he did actually teach
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  to teach women as well you have a chapter on some of your college and you mentioned Dorothy L. Sayers
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  so I think one of the things that strikes me about CS Lewis compared to Tolkien who often
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  if people say there's a lack of women in Tolkien's well the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings I think
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  rather than the Sumerillion and you don't see the same thing so much in the Narnia stories where
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  you've got girls as heroes as well and I think with the what you're saying about the contact
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  with female students but also his home life I don't know if you want to say a little bit about
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  headington which um he's now a suburb of Oxford so people would refer to it in the same
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  breath as Oxford but back in the day would feel like more of a countryside destination where he had
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  his house the kilns and but he lived in a house of women yeah that's right and I mean
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  again also then we think of it as a suburb and and quite a uh well to do suburb of Oxford and
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  when Lewis began living in headington with Mrs Moore before they bought the kilns it was striking to
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  me what a kind of transient life they led you know sort of subletting individual rooms with Lewis
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  sleeping on the sofa and you know it's both really quite a primitive existence to begin with
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  and then of course in 1930 they bought the house that Lewis then lived in for the rest of his life
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  which was you know as you say really quite sort of rural kind of countryside location with a huge
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  ground which is now what's called the CS Lewis nature reserve so you don't really get quite the
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  sense of how big the surrounding area was you know a huge lake which Lewis used to skate on when
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  it iceed over and um and a big wood where joy davidman would go shooting pigeons and things and um
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  so you know it was like living in the countryside and actually there was a he was a great lover of
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  animals you know it was a they had a real menagerie of various kinds um when they lived there but
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  you're right that he lived there with with with Mrs Moore the mother of his um uh of Paddy Moore
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  that he served with during the first world war but who was killed and her daughter Maureen so
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  you know it was quite a female household um but you know it's interesting to me as well the
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  extent to which he was living at the kilns but also living in college you know he was obviously
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  splitting his time um in a way that nowadays you either would live in or live out in those days
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  I think you could kind of move between the two worlds so that you know he spent so many evenings
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  in college doing various kinds of societies you know we know about the inklings meeting on a
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  Thursday night in his rooms here in Mordland but you know every night he was doing something similar
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  it was incredible um so he would quite often sleep over during the week in term time go back at
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  weekends and then probably spend most of the vacations living in the kilns that's one of the elements
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  I haven't really clocked because um it's a it's a short distance but if you miss the bus it's a
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  long way uh and so if you're late chatting into you know midnight with the the inklings you want
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  Tolkien could always cycle back home because his house was in the central Oxford itself
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  but Lewis of course he would have to stay over um one of the things that you reminded me of when I
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  was reading it is how when Lewis starts his academic career in the 20s well coming out of the war
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  actually he's considering himself his ambition is to be a poet and actually what he wanted to
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  excel at and you have a beautiful poem about Oxford I don't know if you want to read a little bit
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  if you've got it to hand um let me try and put it here in my coffee because I printed it at the
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  beginning of the book um then it's yeah it's a poem that he wrote during the war when he was actually
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  it you know on the front line in the trenches um and I find it very poignant because he of course
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  started his Oxford career in April 1917 so during the war but he didn't really ever gets
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  properly started he mostly was just doing some training with the Oxford um could that core
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  then he goes off to keyboard college and starts you know training properly with with the um
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  the Somerset light infantry and then by November of that year his 19th birthday he finds himself
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  in France on the front line but he has had a well at that point a kind of glimpse of what Oxford
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  could offer but it is already being taken away from him and he's sort of obviously looking at
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  you know what um what he hopes is is lying ahead of him in the future so um so how much of this
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  would you like me to read um I think um if you read the first verse and then the last verse that
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  will give a sense of um his his relationship to Oxford okay it is well that there are palaces of
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  peace and discipline and dreaming and desire unless we forget our heritage and cease the spirit's
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  work to hunger and aspire she was not build it out of common stone but out of all men's yearning
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  and all prayer that she might live eternally our own the spirit's stronghold barred against despair
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  so in a way Oxford is everything the war isn't you know yeah so it's a very important
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  place to him this is before he was obviously had his conversion is it's a it's a spiritual experience
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  been being in Oxford um in a non-Christian sense but obviously that that then got even more
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  special when he became a Christian and was it 31 1931 as a result of meeting people here so
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  when you were doing your research yourself like you've been snooping around or the archives
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  of all the colleges it's only thing that really surprised you or odd little thing that you found
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  out that you have no idea had gone on at the time for me the the fact that I sort of took away
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  is the image of see if there was sitting on the bus going up the hill heading to New Hill leaving
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  Oxford for the countryside I sort of knew that but reading this again I reckon that transition
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  from one place to another was very important to him in his understanding his own life and his
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  creativity and relationship to Oxford so that's my takeaway is the bus journey like nice and practical
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  well and of course there's a moment in surprise by joy where he talks about that exact bus
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  journey isn't that I mean and you think of it it's such a kind of quotidian sort of ordinary
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  kind of experience but for Lewis got off and loads of the moments where he has these great spiritual
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  insights when he talks about you know suddenly I found myself having to confront the reality of
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  you know whether to well I know again interestingly in quite non-earned terms he says I needed to
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  decide whether to open the door or leave it closed you know it's a moment of sudden crisis in his
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  deciding whether to accept the Christian faith or not it happens on that bus going up heading to
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  New Hill so I think that is a significant feature of his life I think one of the things that I was
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  really struck by it was the sheer workload because you know we think about how much he you know he
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  was so productive and it's tempting to imagine it were quite leisurely days as an Oxford academic
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  and now obviously we have lots of committees and we have to do kinds of different sort of paperwork
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  and reporting and so on but the amount of tutorial teaching he was doing you know I've already
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  mentioned that the the women's colleges but you know he left Univ when he came here in 1925
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  as the he was the college's modlands first English tutor because it's a relatively new subject
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  and he carried on teaching the English students at Univ for the next kind of at least 15 years
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  alongside all of those students here at Modeling and also he was teaching at New College as well
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  as that the ladies colleges and you know he said that he comes here as an English tutor but you
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  know his training was in classics and particularly in philosophy and as a result he was asked to
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  teach the philosophers at Modeling which he did and I also found he was teaching the historians
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  as well so he had a an immense teaching load and you know we have to remember in those days this
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  is one-on-one tutorial teaching so there's no sense in which you're sort of doubling them up or
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  having classes or so that that was something that struck me was that just how did he fit everything
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  in and the other sort of nice discoveries say I'm snooping around the archives one thing that I
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  that I was really struck by was that when when he arrived at Modeling there was a ban on any
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  student clubs and societies you know the very thing that we associated him with because the
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  president felt that they were interfering with more important pursuits like rowing and that's not
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  a club yeah yeah and and so Lewis felt that this was somehow the wrong way around and he and the
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  ancient he and one of the history tutors KB McFarlane set up a thing called the Nicholas Club
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  and it was a sort of literary philosophical discussion group which is obviously in keeping with
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  lots of things that that Lewis was actively engaged in at the time and in fact he gave papers at
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  it himself and and then other students spoke at events and then they decided after a few years to
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  have some invited speakers from outside the college and one of them I think and this is not
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  surprising but one of them was Tolkien and came and gave a paper on constructed languages
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  and there's a lovely little account in the minute book of of this event and it says that
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  Professor Tolkien came and spoke to us he talked about the origins of constructed languages he
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  traces it back to an emalic and some of these early languages that he was involved in as a child
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  he then gave some polished philologies of his own and read poems in those languages
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  and it was only after I sort of read that account that I realized looking at the data there that
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  what this is is an early version of what becomes a secret vice early in a sense that we think of
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  secret vice being the first time that Tolkien ever talked about his his construction of his own
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  languages and shared some of the poetry that he'd written in them but actually this
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  event at Mordland which happened in June 1930 predates that by about a year and a half and so
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  that that really was a really surprising find not surprising I suppose in some ways because you
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  might think that the first time that he talked about all of these things would be with CS Lewis
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  and so in that sense it was in keeping but it just amazed me that this document was sitting there
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  in the college archives and they'd ever really put those two connections together and very
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  frustratingly though the student who wrote the account of it you know you'd like to have heard
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  a lot more about this but he says unfortunately because I had an exam that it's morning I had to
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  leave early and so I couldn't stay for the rest of the discussion so we never quite find out
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  you know what exactly was said afterwards oh that is a shame isn't it lost to history you did
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  mention earlier on that in some ways Lewis's career reached a blockade in Oxford and so he actually
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  got his chair over a professorship chair over in the other Mordland in Cambridge when you were
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  thinking about this what did you come up having got your Mordland Oxford experience and then looking
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  at Mordland Cambridge what do you think of the two experiences as far as Lewis's concerned
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  to the outside they seem very similar cities but insiders might think actually they're quite
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  different certainly his colleges yeah I mean certainly you know Lewis says himself that Mordland
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  Cambridge was much smaller than Mordland Oxford and he found it quite a congenial change in that
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  sense it was smaller was friendlier I think by the time that he'd spent nearly 30 years at Mordland
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  Oxford he had a lot of longstanding friends but he also had some enemies and by the time he'd become
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  a very successful sort of public apologies for the Christian faith I think he had you know he had
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  his admirers but he had his detractors and I think moving to Mordland Cambridge where it just seemed
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  homelier friendly around and also he says they were much less hostile to to the Christian faith
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  you know he he talks about Mordland the in penitent for Mordland Oxford and so I think he felt under
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  sort of yeah that it wasn't so an entirely congenial environment for him by that stage but also
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  switching jobs they may sound to outsiders like very similar things and you might wonder why you
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  move from one to the other but the distinction was much clearer in those days and that's to say
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  that he was always Mr Lewis in Oxford and it wasn't just about getting the title they they are
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  different jobs in the sense that a tutorial fellow is responsible for doing all of the all of these
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  tutorials he's one-on-one meetings with students going through their essays and it's very time
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  consuming and as I've said he's he did a lot of tutorial teaching whereas a professor gave a number
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  of lectures and that was all of their duties otherwise it's mostly research and graduate teaching
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  well Lewis wasn't a big fan of graduate teaching that's that's fair to say he didn't he didn't
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  think that the research degrees were a worthwhile thing he just should just carry on reading more
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  but you know the idea of just lecturing and not having to do tutorials was obviously appealing to
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  him and in fact he says after he's made the move that you know I've never had so much free time
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  since I was at school it's like getting twice the money for half the work and so I think it you
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  know that it made a big difference to him in that way and and I think he also talks about
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  Cambridge as being like a sort of county town you know you can walk out from Cambridge and find
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  yourself in the countryside very quickly and he certainly got a bit fed up with the way that
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  headington you know we've talked about it as being in the countryside but by the time he moved
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  to Cambridge it was becoming much more suburban and it was a big cowly car factory and all of the
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  workers houses that being built all around where he is I mean now of course there's a huge ring
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  road that goes right past his front door and I think in that sense he felt that the Oxfordshire
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  countryside was being spoiled and the Cambridge had still preserved it so he seems to have very much
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  enjoyed that elements of that switch but as I say he never actually moved to Cambridge it was just
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  a kind of place that he that he lived during term time well save this pleasure for people when
• 28:54
  they get to read it but you're very funny about CS Lewis's experience of being a college administrator
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  he takes I wasn't it was the name of the role that he took on at the Goodisserie Park and was
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  hopeless at yeah the vice president there we go that's I've found that very funny he was completely
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  in above his head yeah but being very sort of responsible he felt he had to do it when he's
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  admin wasn't his skill no and I love the fact when he goes when he goes to Cambridge and they suggest
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  because one of the duties of a professor is that you are required to take on the duties of head
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  of department if you're asked to do it and so immediately they ask him to do it he says no
• 29:36
  no no this has been tried before it was a disaster oh yes very well we all can think that he's
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  time might have been better spent rather than doing that yeah he's actually many people listening
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  to this will be trying their hand at writing fantasy what in your research did you learn about
• 29:55
  Oxford it's coming back to Oxford from Cambridge and what did you learn about Oxford
• 30:00
  infiltrating into his fantasy imagination because you and I both know I'm walking around Oxford do
• 30:05
  you hear the tour guide saying yes and this little carving here definitely inspired the the
• 30:12
  fawn and this one inspired a van and so on was there something else that you found in Oxford that
• 30:17
  was feeding into his his his fiction yeah it's interesting isn't it because actually
• 30:25
  you know having just been talking about Cambridge I mean Oxford's full of fantasy writers
• 30:31
  in the past and present but it's Cambridge I don't know you probably know better than me but
• 30:35
  it's got a quite a few poets and currently the generation has a lot of nature writers there
• 30:39
  Robert Stalin I think is based there isn't he yeah he doesn't have quite this and scientists you know
• 30:45
  with Newton and Cavendish labs and things so but they don't have the hotspots of Lewis Carroll
• 30:54
  C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Dynawin Jones, Philip Pullman and so on so one thing Cambridge can have to
• 31:02
  we'll have to a seed to Oxford I think exactly and it does make one wonder you know what is it
• 31:08
  about Oxford that's so conducive to fantasy writing and does that lovely essay by Philip Pullman
• 31:14
  where he sort of suggests that maybe it's something to do with the fog coming off the rivers that
• 31:19
  have this kind of solvent effect on reality and you know or the gargoyles coming down at night
• 31:24
  from New College Tower and having a fight with the gargoyles from Lordlin and all of this and
• 31:30
  and it is tempting to think that you know the buildings the place you know inspire much of this
• 31:37
  kind of fantastical imagining and I won't pass that that middle doorway the other day in St Mary's
• 31:44
  passage where you know you always see a group of tourists and so I sort of listened to see what
• 31:50
  they were saying and and it is that standard story always that you know Lewis is coming out of
• 31:55
  the church and he sees the doorway and there's the fawn and there's the lion's head and so on
• 32:00
  but the reality is of course that the the actual images that lie behind the line which in the
• 32:06
  wardrobe Lewis tells us go back to when he was a school child you know he had the image of a fawn
• 32:11
  in a wood surrounded by snow holding some brown paper parcels so you know I think we
• 32:18
  I don't think we can actually sort of you know that there are lamp posts all over Oxford that we
• 32:24
  want to claim as being the origin of lantern waste and so on but I think we're probably going
• 32:29
  about the wrong way looking to find a specific landmark of something that's influenced Lewis although
• 32:36
  of course you know you're walking around Lordlin and seeing all the stone statues of these strange
• 32:40
  mythological beasts you can't help but think of you know always it the white witch that's
• 32:45
  turned them to stone and you know it's the the white stag that we currently have in the deer park
• 32:51
  and so on there's so many nanny and touch points in Oxford but I suppose what I came the conclusion
• 32:57
  I came to having sort of thought about all these things is that actually what really links Oxford
• 33:05
  with Lewis's fantastical worlds is the literature that he was reading as part of his studies and
• 33:14
  teaching as part of his academic job because of course you know nanny in particular is so influenced
• 33:21
  by such a huge variety of literary works especially classical medieval ones in which he was
• 33:29
  completely immersed and so that seems to me to be to be key to it and also the fact that he came
• 33:37
  into contact with people like Tolkien who were also interested in the same thing and that they had
• 33:44
  the libraries that furnished them with these books but also places like colleges where they could
• 33:52
  beat in the SCRs and high-tabled dinners or the pubs like the Eagling Child and the East Gate where
• 33:59
  they could sit and talk but that that's really what I think Oxford is doing it's providing
• 34:06
  the people in the place within which they can sort of come together and feed from each other's
• 34:13
  shared interests and respond to each other's criticisms and provocations and inspirations and so on.
• 34:20
  It may be something to do with the historic construction of the English syllabus as well because
• 34:27
  the Oxford one sort of gave priority to the the early stuff you know the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval
• 34:35
  which if you think about it is largely fantasy stories. Whereas Cambridge certainly
• 34:42
  towards the end of his life is all caught up in the debates about literary criticism and how you
• 34:47
  re-text much more a sort of philosophy of criticism interest there which is
• 34:52
  antithesis of interest in story and so I sometimes wonder if it is that that's also going on.
• 35:00
  Yeah I think that's a really good point I mean I think Lewis found that when he moved to Cambridge
• 35:04
  there's and of course Anglo-Saxon isn't part of English studies at all in Cambridge it's part
• 35:10
  of a different department Anglo-Saxon in Norse and Celtic and I think that Lewis found odd and also
• 35:16
  yeah the study of what he calls literary criticism with the biggest possible capitals for both words
• 35:23
  which you know I think he you know he didn't have a lot of time for that kind of theory
• 35:27
  but and that was very much the forefront in Cambridge so I agree with that and you know
• 35:32
  this sort of the submersion in I mean story is exactly what Lewis is all about isn't it
• 35:37
  that that's it if he is interested in in theory it's in what makes a good story so yeah I agree.
• 35:44
  So if you're thinking of a good Christmas gift for a CS Lewis fan in your life what to put on
• 35:50
  your own list CS Lewis's Oxford is definitely well worth a look it's got it's beautifully produced
• 35:57
  lots of pictures which I would love really beautiful ones so I highly recommend it and we'll put a
• 36:05
  link in our show notes so that you can click your way through to finding it so Simon thank you
• 36:11
  for your time but just before we send you back into teaching your your undergraduates
• 36:16
  um we always end with wearing all the fantasy world is the best place for something we've gone to
• 36:21
  the best pub we've gone to um when we've been different kinds of people like the best assassin
• 36:26
  that kind of thing um but I thought in honor of CS Lewis we should have where is the best place
• 36:32
  to go through a wardrobe which is slightly different because our wardrobe doesn't just go to
• 36:37
  Narnia it can go to any fantasy world whatsoever so imagine there's a wardrobe in your office
• 36:43
  that you can walk through into any fantasy world we'll allow it to always go to Narnia as well
• 36:48
  occasionally but if it's going somewhere else where would you like to go in terms of a fantasy
• 36:53
  world to visit as as a professor of English language and literature it's going to sound a bit
• 37:00
  predictable but I would want to go to middle earth uh well this is vividly for the reason you've
• 37:04
  just given because of course so much of that is again light Lewis like Narnia built out of
• 37:12
  medieval but particularly sort of philological um things that I'm interested in so you know
• 37:18
  I mean the sort of you know the fact that all thanked comes out of all thanked into your way or
• 37:24
  you know the cunning work of giants from an old English poet makes me just want to go and see it
• 37:30
  and um so it's those specific connections and also the fact that you know the writers of Rohan
• 37:36
  actually speak Old English um you know if you do do well there wouldn't you but where's the
• 37:41
  failed and how you know I can I can do I I could converse with them that would be fun
• 37:46
  but I feel like it might be a bit controversial because um of course you know
• 37:51
  Narnia you can kind of dip in and out of through these portals like wardrobe but of course middle
• 37:55
  earth isn't really like that you know it's not a place that you kind of portal in and out of
• 37:59
  so I don't know how it how it would take a special dispensation. Okay that's good.
• 38:04
  I'm promoted um I um in answer to my own question um I think I'm going to stick with
• 38:09
  CS Lewis actually and that but I'd I'd switch to his face trilogy I'd quite like to visit
• 38:14
  temporarily and not for a long period of time his version of Perilandra Venus
• 38:20
  because the descriptions of that are so amazing I would just love to go and see it the way he
• 38:25
  imagines this place that almost has no solid solidity to it not the real one because if I went to
• 38:31
  the real one I would just die but his one uh as he imagined it I think would be really fascinating
• 38:37
  but I would be coming quickly back through the wardrobe because I think it's only for a short
• 38:41
  term visit that one. Thank you so much Simon and um thank you very much for writing this book
• 38:47
  which uh I'm certainly going to treasure thank you very much. Thanks very much for having me.
• 38:56
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• 39:03
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