Latest / Mythmakers / Surprised by Oxford - Academic and author Carolyn Weber on her book and biopic about her experience in the city

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Surprised by Oxford - Academic and author Carolyn Weber on her book and biopic about her experience in the city · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators
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  brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm an author
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  but I also am the director of the Centre. And I was thrilled looking through the upcoming
• 0:25
  publications and films to discover Caroline Weber who is our guest today because Caroline
• 0:32
  is just put out a book and a film project called Surprise by Oxford. You couldn't really
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  find anything more on brand than that. So Caroline, tell us something about yourself.
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  Thank you so much Julia for having me here. Yes, I'm a, I have an M-Fell and a D-Fell
• 0:49
  and romantic literature from Oxford and and did have a wonderful experience there and I
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  am currently a professor at New College Franklin. We moved recently to the Nashville Tennessee
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  area and I do writing and speaking and teaching on faith and literature and the intersection
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  of various genres in that way. Now I was particularly excited in a very personal way because the very
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  course that you did was the one that I did. So picture me back in 1995, I just left the
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  diplomatic service or took a break from it. I was having my first two children and I embarked
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  on the M-Fell, the masters of philosophy in romantic literature and which then did another
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  few more years after that to do the D-Fell and I think you did exactly the same thing, didn't
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  you? I did, I did, but without children at the time, so you were far braver than me.
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  Well, it worked out for me. My, my daughter is my M-Fell baby. My, my, my, my D-Fell baby.
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  And if you remember sitting in the, because part of the M-Fell, as you remember, had written
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  exams, one last experience of written exam and I, my daughter had chickenpox. I was sitting
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  in the hall thinking I bet I'm the only person here who's actually rushed here from having
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  put chamomile ocean on, on a, on a disagreeable baby. You probably do have a hold on that corner.
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  Anyway, you got mine saying when, when did you do your doctorate? When you did it after me?
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  So I was a little bit before you for the M-Fell, I came as a Commonwealth scholar a few years
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  beforehand and then I was married just shortly after the time you arrived and hadn't moved to
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  DC for my husband's work and did the doctorate. The first year of the doctorate or so there,
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  but then long distance for a few years after that. So I finished my doctorate a little later.
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  Yeah, that explains why we didn't actually meet at that stage. I, isn't that, I mean, we were,
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  we would have overlapped a little, I think. Yeah. So did we sit at the feet of Jonathan
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  Wordsworth, for example? I did. Yeah. So there was, for those of you who recognise the surname,
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  they're one of the academics at the time who has since passed away, sadly, was a relative of Jonathan
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  Wordsworth, which kind of feels like the name of William Wordsworth. He was Jonathan and his great,
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  great, great, great uncle. So you feel as somehow a surname has decided that chat's future?
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  Yes. Yes. Yes. It was, it was a wonderful group that I had a great chance to study under.
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  Okay, so let's think about what we're interested in most is obviously your, your book and your
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  film, surprised by Oxford nods towards CS Lewis's account of his early years. Okay, finishes in
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  in the early 30s, doesn't it? Surprise and joy. So tell us a little bit more, more about your
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  connection to CS Lewis and your time in Oxford. Well, it was interesting. I had arrived to like most
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  from mainstream culture. I knew the Narnia Chronicles as a child and, and had adored those,
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  didn't think of them in any sort of deeper way. I did not know of Lewis as a late theologian or
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  really much as even a literary critic, especially coming from a larger secular undergraduate
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  system. And so I was introduced to him through some friends when I was reading at Oxford and I was
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  actually dragged somewhat reluctantly myself to a CS Lewis society meeting. Thinking that it would
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  be corny or, you know, whatever. And I actually was really, really moved by it in PC Hall at the time
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  and it planted some seeds. So I ended up reading his, surprised by George, sort of, you know,
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  much later in my life at that point. But I was intrigued because the title is from Wordsworth
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  and I was studying the Romantics. I thought, okay, what's this about? But at that point, I ended
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  up reading a few other of his works. Actually, one of the works I had read just prior to that,
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  which wedded my appetite for him further, was Sheldon Vanoccan's a severe mercy. And I was not
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  a Christian at that point and had read that and knew that Vanoccan had studied, had read and worked
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  with Lewis as a student. So I was intrigued by, I started to become more intrigued by him
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  through, sort of, that back door. Yes. And I, if I remember the severe mercy, that's a very moving
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  book. He's back in the account of a man who loses his wife quite early on, isn't he?
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  It is. It's a very, very poignant book.
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  Yeah, it mirrors the experience that Lewis went on to have, of course, when his, his wife,
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  Joy, David Mann passed away from cancer too. So there's a, that sort of clicks into the grief
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  observed side of CS Lewis. Yes, the problem of pain. So you pitch up in Oxford, you find that's
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  CS Lewis is connecting to Wordsworth. Thank you for reminding me of that. I didn't know that, but
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  so what did you think of Oxford in relationship to CS Lewis? Were you seeing him around every corner?
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  Did you feel haunted in the nicest way by the Inklings?
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  Oh, I felt tremendously haunted by virtually everyone who's thought of thought.
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  Before when I arrived at Oxford, you sort of feel it in the walls, but, but increasingly so.
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  At first, no, I wasn't even aware of the Inklings until, again, being with friends and then
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  going to the Eagle and Child or the Bird and Babe ourselves. And the same thing with Tolkien as
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  well, I'd known, you know, Hobbit, Lord of the Rings as a child. And I had a mother who was a
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  voracious reader and I was always really blessed by that. And, and somewhat sort of a, a very
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  magical person herself. But I hadn't known any of his other works or really had known
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  of his ideologies or his friendships. I didn't know of Charles Williams or, I mean, you know, his
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  novels are a certain taste. And, you know, that sort of thing. So I didn't know the wider
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  Inklings as a group in that sense. And so as I slowly began to then get introduced to George
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  McDonald and Chester Tin and that through, and then Sayers, you know, through these really
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  interesting friendships and their own codery conversations, which I think is a romantic. I was
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  in, I was always drawn to because of their circles. Yeah. You know, then it just expands like, like,
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  you know, roots in terms of connecting and reading other ideas that I was really intrigued by.
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  I mean, if you stopped any literary student of our kind and asked them name a famous literary group
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  from the 1930s, people would say, oh, well, obviously the Bloom's peak group. The Bloom's
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  is like in your wolf and co. But if you say, well, actually, remember how that fabulously
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  popular genre fantasy was shaped by Tolkien and CS Lewis. And much of, and the friendship
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  between Dorothy Sayers and TS Eliot and Charles Williams, you've got another group that who don't
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  really kind of make it onto the university syllabus do they? So I'm not surprised you didn't know
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  about them. And they don't make it on the secular university syllabus or the, yes, in many ways.
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  And yet when you find something like a treasure like the Wade Center with all the collection of
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  the inklings, you know, and everything at Wheaton College, it's just a treasure trove of really rich
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  ideas, regardless of your religious stripe. Yeah, absolutely. And they were not the same kind of
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  questions at all to each other, not at all. Charles Williams was extraordinary with his, with his
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  secret society in print. And then we get sort of Northern Irish Protestants, then Anglican,
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  CS Lewis, and of course Catholic Tolkien. So within that, you've got lots of flavours of your
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  Christian ice cream. Okay, so what brought you to write the book surprised by Oxford?
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  That's such a big and deep and wonderful question. It was not something I intended to do. I said
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  out to do at all, Julia. I was an academic and was used to writing, you know, mainly researched work.
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  And but my experience there, especially over the course of my first year at Oxford,
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  of reading these other thinkers and exploring a life of faith, and then eventually myself becoming
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  a Christian, had really sort of been sitting in my heart and my head. And I certainly didn't
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  proselytise to students. I was teaching at different types of universities, but in private conversations
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  with students or students who were asking or whatnot, you know, my faith was a topic. And I also
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  had felt that I really wanted to share the story and write more about it for my friends and family
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  who did not have a faith or had questions about it similarly to myself. So I wrote it really quite
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  personally, in a sense, actually more for sort of me and God and me and this audience of friends
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  or family members and students who kept prompting and asking. And I had written a couple of chapters
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  that were foremost in my mind at first and then tabled it, wrote a bit, tabled it, and did for
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  some time. Largely, actually at the time I was untenured in the secular system and was really
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  warned not to publish something about my faith until I had some sort of job security
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  and even then perhaps not. So there was that wrangling until something in my life really
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  actually changed that and made me realize that where the line in the sand was for me regardless.
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  But it ended up being longer than I anticipated. I think as English lit people, we have a lot of
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  words. But I also felt it was important to share post-conversion as well. What that was really
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  like kind of being in the world and not of it, that I'm like an unhime-like sort of existence.
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  You know, that it's yes, it's an amazing experience and spiritually moving and deep, but there's
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  also this reality of trying to now navigate a new world and a new way of being. And I wanted to
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  share that as well. So I had actually ended up writing it over several years, but I ended up writing
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  the rest of it quite quickly. You'll probably understand this after I was on my first sabbatical
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  and in Santa Barbara when I was teaching as a guest lecture or guest teacher for Westmont College.
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  And I had three children under three. So I had twins and my little girl. And that was the greatest
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  sort of incentive for overcoming writer's block in terms of hiding and finally getting it done
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  when I had moments and it brought it together for me. Yeah, so here's a sidebar for creatives here.
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  And when she could ask me about writer's vlog and because my career when I was on maternity leave
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  for my third child, my usually my first thought is, I didn't have time.
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  Writer's block is a luxury. Maybe goes to sleep. Right, quick.
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  You know, and you pretend you don't hear the first cry. I think, oh, we're going to go to see
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  begin on you. I can write up until a certain volume.
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  Yeah, no, so absolutely. So just putting your book alongside surprise by joy
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  for those who listening who perhaps can't remember the details are surprised by joy.
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  He actually finishes the account. When he's a day, when he sort of calls himself a dayist,
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  he finishes, it's not like a whole version of it. He sort of says that and, you know, going further on
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  was when I eventually became a Christian. He's actually more interested in his journey is
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  having gone out of having a sort of childhood faith into a kind of atheism of the first world war
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  and as a young academic and then having these conversations with Tolkien and others
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  are in barfield that brought him back. So you're actually taking the journey further on as to,
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  you know, what ordinary life looks like beyond that.
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  And did the choice of what you were studying in your romantic hero? Because I haven't
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  asked you what your doctor was about. Did that have a connection to what you were thinking and
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  feeling? Oh, absolutely. And I wouldn't have guessed it at the time. I mean, I think we do go back
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  and see how these points are plotted. But I was drawn to the Romantics because of their interest
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  in that infinite longing. And, you know, as we see even in German romanticism too and
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  endgurta and whatnot. And so I was drawn to that overall out of all the periods I was studying
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  at the time coming out of undergraduate. And so I think that seed was already planted. I was
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  also really interested Julia in world religions. So how religion and was being shaped in what not
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  in England and the Commonwealth by colonialism, but also in the infiltration of the oriented
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  ideas and things there. But how and how many of these particularly second generation romantic
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  writers were writing abroad, they were not writing in England themselves or in Britain themselves.
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  So being shaped by these ideas. And I was really drawn to myth and the Greco-classical world.
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  And really the notion of world religion. So that was actually really shaping my
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  and Phil work. Prior to even though it was rooted in the Romantics, I was sort of reading
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  all around all around that. And I was actually drawn to the metaphysical poets as well. I was
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  trying to figure out even as without a Christian faith at the time trying to figure out what sort of,
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  you know, subtle knot that makes us man done was talking about. And so I was I was really drawn
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  to all sorts of theories and world religions and was studying all of those. And yet highly cynical
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  of the claim Christianity made of being the religion. So yes, all of those things were feeding
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  in to my to my backdrop at the time. Yeah. So if you're doing the second generation
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  Romantics, just people who perhaps don't know, there's a difference. So the first generation
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  of roughly speaking, their words were Sincola Ridge and William Blake who's a kind of on his own
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  figure. And then and sort of minor figures like Robert Southy and others. And then you've got
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  the next generation coming along who think they're all hopelessly fuddy-duddy by the time they
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  get there. I say you get the tolerance. Shelley Keats has it. People like that.
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  Who in their own ways are sort of quite more revolutionary. I mean, not too much Keats.
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  Because he's so short. But yeah, but certainly Shelley was proudly declaring himself an atheist.
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  He's so good at his time. Oh yeah, no, they're religion of the Romantics is absolutely fascinating.
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  And there's all me waters really because it's part of the whole ferment of ideas that's going
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  on there. Absolutely. So you wrote your book after having the prompting to do that. And now
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  I've got image of you sort of, you know, putting baby down, picking up computer.
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  It became, it was published obviously. And where did the film project come from? That part of it.
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  Hmm. Well, yeah, this version latest iteration of this is once. Yeah.
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  Yeah, so it's much later. I mean, I certainly didn't see that coming either. It didn't anticipate
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  writing a memoir nor a film. But several years ago over, I mean, suppressed by Oxford was
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  published about 10 years ago or so. And here and there, I'd had different requests for documentaries
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  or student adaptations or something to be done. There have been a few queries. And I hadn't
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  really taken them seriously because I wanted to be very careful with the story and the integrity
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  of the story. But Ryan Smith, Ryan Whitaker Smith reached out to me. He's a beautiful
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  screenplay writer, writer himself, and he's done some other film work when, well,
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  we were living in Canada. So we had gone, we were out in the States for years and then we had
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  gone up to Canada for about the last eight to 10 years, actually caring for my elderly parents
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  at that time was the main reason. And he was quite doggedly so reaching out. At first, I thought,
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  this wasn't, you know, going to be serious. And until my agent, Mark Sweeney, who's always
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  cared for me and my family, very, very, very, very lovely man, said, I think he's actually quite
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  serious. I think he's actually really quite, quite good. And so I did talk with him at length,
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  we developed a friendship, a relationship, discussing the possibility of adapting this to
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  screenplay. So we were connected for several years by the phone and email that kind of thing.
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  But it's an amazingly small world, Julia and God's hands because I ended up also working in
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  classical education, going to conferences, things like that with Greg Wilber, who had ended
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  up being, he's a wonderful mentor in that area and I had started this college, new college
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  Franklin that I now teach at. And he had been a former professor for Ryan and Ryan's one of his
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  favorite teachers who taught him about film. And so all of these intersections started happening
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  and the film project became just more of a reality. We worked on the screenplay together.
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  Then it was, we thought halted and stopped by COVID as they were trying to get financial
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  backing. And yet what was actually amazing was we ended up doing most of the filming in
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  England during COVID. It actually the doors opened for various locations and protocols and things
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  that we would never have imagined. And I actually had even the amazing opportunity to go there myself,
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  which was very, I mean, absolutely unbelievable given the timing of world events and things like
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  that. So we actually did a bulk of the filming right between the variant, you know, when it was
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  resurfacing. So we had this strange window in which we were allowed to do scenes in the bodily
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  and in that sort of thing. And I was actually able to go with my husband. So it did percolate,
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  I would say over a good five, six years really, but when it, and we expected the filming in that
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  to maybe drag on or have, have many more hurdles, but actually it's been, it was all done quite
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  quickly in the end. A bit like the motorcycle ride for Lewis. It was you. When he decides he's
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  going to become a Christian, I think he's in the sidecar or something isn't he? Yes, he's not one
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  when he leaves and he is when he arrives. And that's kind of how the last bit went.
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  Yeah. So did you have any influence over casting because that surely must be peculiar casting
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  yourself? It's very peculiar and I feel very safe speaking, especially to romanticist about this,
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  it feels like a doppelganger, although a much more attractive and lovely doppelganger
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  in my case, and my husband laughs that he has his hair. But say you had to cast yourself.
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  Yes, I didn't have any say in the casting. It's a strange experience because they consulted me
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  on some things, which was really lovely. They didn't actually have to. You know, you're sort of,
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  when you're making a film of a book, it was an interesting learning curve. They did consult me on
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  some things, but actually technically it's sort of an adaptation of its own. So I was not consulted
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  with the casting. I didn't have any say in that, but I thought that who they casted were fantastic,
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  and I did get to meet many of them. Just Rosarie who plays myself, which is a really surreal strange
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  thing to say, is just a delight and a very talented actress and a very beautiful person. So that
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  was a great honor to have her do that. But also I think it was, and she's a fellow bibliophile.
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  But those kind of many of those decisions were out of my hands.
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  And so you've now had the launch of the film. What kind of distribution is it getting?
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  Will I be able to go and see it towards it for streaming?
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  Yes, well, we're still in process of thinking over that and trying to think the right,
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  they're trying to figure out the best distribution plan. So it did have its world premiere
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  to a limited audience for critics and whatnot at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis
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  a couple weeks ago. And it did receive excellent reviews, which was really heartening.
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  And the audience, again, regardless of religious stripes, were enjoyed it and there was great feedback.
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  But at the moment, it's not available for public distribution. We're still awaiting what that plan
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  will be. So they were hoping that that would be decided or figured out before Christmas. But I
• 23:00
  don't think that will be quite enough time right now. So they're hoping for I think a hybrid model
• 23:05
  would be lovely to have some time in theaters and some and sun streaming. You know, the world has
• 23:10
  so shifted and changed. And you know, with COVID. So we're still sitting on that at the moment.
• 23:17
  It's you can't watch it yet. But it hopefully will be distributed soon, probably early spring. I
• 23:23
  would imagine now. So one of the reasons, Carolyn, I really wanted to talk to you from the point of
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  view of the Oxford Center for Fantasy is I wanted to ask you about your version of Oxford.
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  Because one of the things that you soon sort of learn when you think about
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  these writers and the way they interact with Oxford is that Oxford is a real place. But it also
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  is a mythic place. And it appears that there are so many fantasy books. And I've got this
• 23:53
  idea of it being like a palimpsest. You were saying you were saying hello to all sorts of people as
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  you walk around, you know, from the people way back in history like Fryer Bacon and those kinds of
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  you know, early scientific pioneers up to today's generation. So when you think about Oxford,
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  are you sort of conscious of it being almost like a fantastical location for yourself or
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  how do you, where's it fit? That's such a lovely question. Such a lovely question.
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  I mean, I think you probably experienced this as well. On one level, it's a very, very real place,
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  you know, with politics and pressures and a lot of expectations and work and delight and busy.
• 24:42
  You know, your term is incredibly whirlwindy busy. I mean, I always think of the white rabbit,
• 24:47
  you know, in terms of how term functions. But it also is haunted. It is a place that you can feel
• 24:58
  the history. I think everyone does. I think that's a magic that appeals to everyone in a way.
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  The cinematography in this film is beautiful. They did a lovely job, which is why it really
• 25:07
  lends itself to the big screen. But there is something I think that speaks to all of us in ruins
• 25:12
  or in old places that carry many stories. A polymsist is a great example. When you're there,
• 25:19
  you feel the history, you feel the thoughts, you feel the suffering, you feel what has happened
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  there. It's contained in that. That's part of the mystique of a place like England as well,
• 25:29
  but also of particularly Oxford, because it's, you feel the concentration of history and a
• 25:35
  thought, don't you? And so they decided in the film to really highlight the sort of magical,
• 25:44
  fairy realm feel of it as through my eyes, which I did feel, but in tandem with this student
• 25:52
  life and this busy life and then later this life being employed there too. But you do feel like
• 26:00
  you're on the shore of something, you know, that any moment it could tipper that you're somehow in
• 26:05
  this liminal space between the two worlds. I mean, you do look at the portals going into the
• 26:09
  into the colleges and they do open into these vast gorgeous beautiful gardens and you can't help
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  but think of Narnia, right? They are like wardrobe doors. They are like it is interesting to have
• 26:20
  this very busy bustling city in the town, down dichotomy, and yet you can walk a few feet and be
• 26:26
  entirely in in perfect peace. Yeah, I mean, I did my undergraduate at Cambridge,
• 26:32
  right, which I'm very fond of. And the thing about Cambridge is that its beauty is
• 26:37
  is there exposed to sea because of the way that it works with the river is you can walk as a member
• 26:43
  of the public, you can walk along the backs and you see a whole range of most incredible beautiful
• 26:48
  buildings. So the beauty of the universities on the outside, yeah, feasible. Think about
• 26:56
  Oxford is it's full of secrets, stories and stories and you can't really see how beautiful
• 27:01
  each of the colleges are until you actually go in. And so my interaction with Oxford has been as a
• 27:09
  I had my academic phase but I've also worked there and raised a family there so I'm very town.
• 27:16
  Right. I'm not actually town anymore. And still for me, I can sort of go into a, I've went to a
• 27:25
  friend's wedding anniversary in a college and you go into the Unitarian Chapel and find amazing
• 27:31
  windows by William Morris and I think it's Bern Jones. You think, well, if there's any other city,
• 27:38
  this would be on the map. Right. And so if you think to go, it took me about 25 years to know it was
• 27:45
  there. And then a lockdown as well. We bring the phase when we were only allowed to walk
• 27:53
  from the door for a certain length of time during under the regulations. We started exploring the
• 27:59
  bits on the map we never been and discovered a whole series of wonderful walks right in the heart
• 28:04
  of the city. Absolutely. And then a place for music meadow which in itself sounds storybook.
• 28:11
  It's you're on you're on the Chak Chauwell River with an old mill and blue bells and birds and trees
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  and you are literally in the heart of the city. You go deeper into the city and this is this little
• 28:24
  enclave, natural enclave is there. Again, it took us 25 years to find that.
• 28:31
  So I agree with you that I think Oxford is a place of doorways and of course the the biggest of
• 28:37
  the fancy writers for doorways I think other than but an Oxford one is Lewis Carroll.
• 28:45
  Yes, absolutely. That image of the tiny door you can't get through because and then you forget
• 28:51
  to get the key when you eat the cake. Right, you know, that's what you're being on the wrong side
• 28:58
  of the door thing. Yes, Oxford definitely definitely does reward the seeker and it does remind you
• 29:04
  that things not everything's seen, you know, there's the unseen as well. And so it is very,
• 29:14
  there is a a magic to it. That's very real in that sense. Yes, but also,
• 29:22
  they don't know you romanticize it because there is some cutthroat and absolutely stuff going on.
• 29:29
  So it's probably quite a good counterbalance that one of the most favorite famous television
• 29:35
  programs here about Oxford is Inspector Morse where people are dropping like flies.
• 29:40
  Yeah, it is. So and Dorothy is of course is famous for her crime fiction. So we also spawn
• 29:47
  you know, a lot of violence. Oh, yes, and there's I mean, it's a fallen city like anywhere else,
• 29:55
  you know, there I mean, there's people and human interactions and lots of political
• 29:59
  issues. It's not as dangerous as it's made out in crime fiction, you know, no, it's actually a very
• 30:04
  face safe city really. It is overall. Yeah. So moving away from surprised by Oxford to your
• 30:15
  specialism in the romantic era, this is one of the great periods for fantasy. Though people perhaps
• 30:20
  don't associate it with that because we call it gothic fiction. And we call it the collectors
• 30:28
  of fairy tales and folktales like the brothers Grimm, but also of course, the poets were doing
• 30:34
  this too, the romantic poets. So it is it is very right. Some of the sort of tropes for fairy tales
• 30:43
  came into our European consciousness at this point. Yes. And Robert Salvi is credited for being
• 30:51
  the first person to write down Goldilocks, I don't know if that's true or not. Oh, I didn't know
• 30:55
  that. Strange facts. I'm everything that's weird. And you know, I don't think I do recall that
• 31:01
  because of his relationship with Courage's children, wasn't it? Yeah. Yes. That's right. That's
• 31:08
  right. So Carolyn, do you have a favorite romantic era fantasy story or poem that we should try to
• 31:14
  read? There are so many and it's such a wonderful dance time and and I'm drawn to to Scottish
• 31:24
  nationalism and that as well. I think it's really interesting in terms of the folk stories there.
• 31:28
  I, but off the top of my head, I think one of the most important and beautiful to read is
• 31:34
  Courage's Ancient Mariner. Yes. Have you read the wonderful Malcolm Guite? Yes. So people
• 31:42
  want to read a wonderful biography of Courage plus an explanation of the Ancient Mariner and Malcolm
• 31:47
  Guite, who is also a Tolkien expert, has written a wonderful book based on it. Yeah, I agree. Though
• 31:55
  I think Kubla Khan, you just have to read for the sounds as well. You do. You just have to read it
• 32:01
  as T.S. Eliot says, right, that a poem is an event. You just have to read it to experience it
• 32:08
  and yet it's ending is really much that magical realm. But I think Ancient Mariner, the ballad rhyme
• 32:18
  scheme, the story development, the end turn to another into another world that's in many ways
• 32:25
  our psychospiritual landscape, actually, that journey into the interior. Again,
• 32:28
  to think about Margaret Atward and her poem by that name, but it's such a, it's such a beautiful
• 32:35
  rich otherworldly experience. I think. Has we should get you back, Carolane, to talk about
• 32:42
  Courage? Because I haven't yet done a podcast on him, but we, of course, the romantic writers and
• 32:47
  fantasy is definitely a podcast we should do. And that is fun. So just to finish up, we always have a
• 32:55
  where in all the world, in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something. We've done
• 33:01
  ins and magic swords and so on and so on. As we have both done academic things with
• 33:09
  small children, Rugrats at our knee. I thought I'd ask you, where in all the fantasy worlds
• 33:17
  is it the best place to be a parent? Very often in fantasy worlds, the parents have gotten rid of.
• 33:22
  So that's true. Where is a good place to be a parent? Well, I think obviously,
• 33:32
  Rivendell would be a great place to be a parent. Unless you leave your daughter behind.
• 33:38
  Yes, I mean true. That's true. That's true. But I do think somewhere where there is immense
• 33:46
  natural beauty and you could trust the trees to care for your child where you have a nap.
• 33:52
  And there's nothing threatening because, of course, we as parents see everything as threatening.
• 34:05
  Yeah, the landscape changes for us and our mortality looms in the moment we have children.
• 34:12
  I was thinking of, I mean, I went through a whole range of horror stories when I was thinking
• 34:17
  about this. But if you manage to survive and your children don't get bumped off,
• 34:21
  the set-up of being a weasley in the past, you know, that's the best we've ever in Harry Potter.
• 34:32
  I have many, many students who wanted to be a weasley and Mark Williams was actually in the film.
• 34:38
  Fantastic news. Oh, there we go. So that's brought the conversation to a lovely and
• 34:43
  meaningful point. So I would, in times of peace, mine is old and I would like to be in the
• 34:52
  world of Harry Potter. As a parent. So thank you so much for talking to us, Carolyn.
• 34:58
  And yeah, it's been wonderful talking to you and I look forward to seeing the film when it does
• 35:03
  get its wider distribution. Thank you so much, Julia. It's a delight to have talked to you with
• 35:08
  you today too. Thank you.
• 35:38
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