Latest / Mythmakers / Mythmakers meets The Mythmakers: John Hendrix and his Graphic Novel about Tolkien and Lewis

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Mythmakers meets The Mythmakers: John Hendrix and his Graphic Novel about Tolkien and Lewis · Mythmakers

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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. And in a change from the usual
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programming today, I actually have two of our main interests combined in one person.
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It is both an illustrator and an author because I'm interviewing today John Hendrix, who has
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recently published the wonderful book called The MythMakers, which is a graphic novel,
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which is about the remarkable fellowship of CS Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. So that couldn't
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be better than for a MythMakers podcast. And John is with us, so hi John, you're speaking
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to Julia Golding. I forgot to introduce myself. That's very impolite of me. And welcome to MythMakers.
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Oh, so glad to be here. I had a fun topic to get to chat with you about today. So before we talk
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about myths, because I'm intrigued how you came, you know, circled around to the same sort of
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idea of making myths that we did on this podcast. I suppose we'll go straight in there as to when
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you first read CS Lewis and Tolkien. I mean, were you, did you do one before the other?
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Avoid the wardrobe stage entirely and just go straight to a dragon. How did it happen for you
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in your childhood? Yes. Well, for me, the Hobbit was very, very important to my early childhood.
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It was a book that I actually carried around with me when I traveled even when I was not reading it.
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I just felt like it was an important relic and the addition I had was the David, David Hague
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illustrated version and or Michael Hague, excuse me. And it had a beautiful illustration of
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smile on the cover and much like Tolkien, I desired dragons with a profound desire. And so any
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dragon-related content I was very interested in. So I first came to the Hobbit and I don't
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fully remember when I read Narnia, but I think I read it out of order. I think I started with
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magicians and FU because I did not see the crystallological metaphors and allegory inside the
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story until much later. And I just read them as wonderful portal fantasy tales because I was
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reading a lot of that kind of thing when I was young. There is an argument for starting with
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magicians and FU of course because that's the genesis to revelation journey through it if you go,
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you know, ending up with the last battle. So yeah, I don't think you, I don't think that's wrong.
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I remember as a child rearranging, I got like a box set which was arranged in order of publication
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and that annoyed me so I arranged them in order of story. So I'm with you there on that.
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And so you're a child who is reading these fantasy stories from over, you know,
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originating in England that have come over to America. But also as you're an illustrator as well,
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I was wondering if there were similarly illustrators who really fired your imagination
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as you were growing up, the ones whose pages you were trying climb inside.
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Yes, well, I mean, of course, these books were richly illustrated and the the Tolkien calendar
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by the Brothers Hilda Brand, the David Nase myth illustrations. You know, I can think of,
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I mean, even like the the very Tolkienian inspired universe of dungeons and dragons and all of
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their ephemera that were associated with those games, the monster manuals, the dragon lance books,
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all of these were richly illustrated texts that were really important to me. I had the images,
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I would buy an extra copy of the magazine so I could have one. And then like these fanzines,
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I would cut out pages to put on the wall of various illustrations of my favorite stories.
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So I had a lot of those images that were really as important as the stories. Like the stories were
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the images and the images were the stories to me. What about the world of comics because
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obviously a graphic novel is the way it's written is closer to comic than novel. So
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were you a follower of any particular comic book series? Well, I started out with just loving
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newspaper comics, you know, Garfield and the far side and Calvin and Hobbes and peanuts.
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And then I grew into comics and sort of serialized stories. Of course, I read X-Men and Spider-Man
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and all those. But it was the original teenage mutant ninja turtles that really took me into
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the kind of comics that could have a dark, a serious, and adult tone. I had not read the
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watchman until much later in my life. But these sort of longer, sort of well drawn, robust,
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full stories that came out as sort of just like big books that you could read in one sitting
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instead of, you know, serialized stories that sort of went on forever. That was really important
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to me to when I got to that age when I was reading comics. I could go to the comic book store on
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my own. Yeah, so this isn't the first graphic novel that you've written. Perhaps you might
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want to tell us a little bit about your journey to writing myth makers and then tell us a little
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bit about what we get when we actually pick up myth makers. Yes, it is a graphic novel, although
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it's graphic nonfiction really is what it is. Sorry, yes, of course. Well, I mean, graphic novel is
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what the category is. If you go to a Barnes and Noble, they don't have a graphic nonfiction
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section. So I certainly call it a graphic novel. Yes, I mean, comics, I think in pictures,
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I start with images and the books that I write, which are for young people, really start with
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trying to take a complex subject and translate it to an audience to make a legible version of
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that story, a kind of usable history that can make sense out of something that I'm interested in
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and that I think the reader could be interested in. So my previous graphic novel for young people
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was called the Faithful Spy and it was the story of Dietrich Bonhoffer who was a German the
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allogen and pastor who joined a plot to assassinate Hitler. And so that book is a kind of thumbnail
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history of how Germany fell into the hands of Adolf Hitler and then the sort of internal
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resistance inside of Germany that was coming from a sort of rebellious part of the church,
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a rebellious seminary inside of the Lutheran church that was opposing Hitler. And so that story
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was one that I thought actually needed images to be told, right? You can of course do a more
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straightforward and there are wonderful books about Tolkien and Lewis and Bonhoffer that are
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you know, straight prose. But to me, I have always learned better with pictures and so that
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that is what I am attempting to create with these books. So tell us a little bit about myth-makers
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then because it's not just, you know, day one Tolkien's born. You got to take a different
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approach and you're giving it a sleeve like an album covers sleeve around it.
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Yes. Yeah. Well, there are these two avatars. In fact, when we start the story,
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we meet Lion and Wizard, which I would just two characters chosen toly at random
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to tell the story of Lewis and Tolkien. And they do act as avatars and sort of audience surrogates
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where they narrate the story a little bit, they go on adventures themselves, they write a dragon,
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they go on a dungeon crawl, and they are sort of our guides through this story. And despite
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the book having a talking lion in it, I really do want this book to be in the nonfiction section
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of a library. So I took the scholarship part of it seriously, though I am not a scholar,
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I am an artist. I really took a lot of pains to make sure that the book was accurate,
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that when you see Tolkien and Lewis talking, that that was sourced to a conversation that really
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exists, that really existed, that had some kind of documentation to it. With the exception of one
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notable part in the end, all of the book is basically sourced in real events and facts and history.
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So as well as the biographical facts of the lives of CS Lewis and Tolkien, which you'll learn
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from this, your lion and your wizard are also discussing the nature of literature and the nature
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of story. And you do this by having a series of portals like the wardrobe that they go through,
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some of which are optional and some of which are in the main text. So that optional aspect reminded
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me a bit of those choose your own adventure books that used to be, I did this to the environment.
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I love them. Yes, I read them all as a kid basically. I just was obsessed with the idea of a book
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that could be interactive like that. So yes, at one point these portals were all inside the
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main body of the text, but my editor was the one who said, I think this is distracting the story.
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And now I actually think it's a lot more fun as a reading experience that you sort of get these
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illustrated footnotes that you can go and hop into or skip through depending on how you want to
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read the story. But yes, I was very much inspired by the choose your own adventure books for my
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So a lot of the adventure, of course, is set in Oxford. And did you come here to
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get some visuals of Oxford, or did you just, you know, Google Earth it?
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Yeah, when I do these books, I really make a point to go and visit these places in person. So
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I had the distinct pleasure of coming to Oxford for about a week in 2019. And before Eagle and
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Child had been closed, I went there. I spent many, many evenings there went to Lamb and Flag.
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Of course, the kilns, the cemeteries where they're both buried and spent a lot of time driving
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around the countryside. There's a notable scene in Lewis's autobiography where he talks about
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going to the Whipsnade Zoo. And so I drove that route. I wanted to see what the countryside felt
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like. So I could capture it accurately in the book. Now that's quite it because I hope you didn't
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go on the motorways because they weren't, they didn't exist there. No, I took the back roads,
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yeah. The back roads. Yeah, because he wasn't here in a sidecar or something. He was. Yes,
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so it's just hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's in Gromit Star. So we're guided by the line
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and the wizard through the world of literature. Can you pick out some examples of what they're talking
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about to give people who are listening and idea of how you're discussing literature? What is the
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particular part of storytelling that you are guiding us through? Well, let me use a quote from
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Lewis from one of his essay or his book, an experiment in criticism. He says that the right way
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you should read literature is not to make a spectacle of the author or to enshrine the author
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itself, but to use the author as spectacles to see what they are seeing. And so that was the
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goal of this book is to use talking in Lewis, not just to learn about them as a sort of like,
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why weren't they geniuses, but try to look at the things that they were looking at and the things
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that they loved in literature. And so to me, that had to start back to the very core of what it meant
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to write a myth and why human beings make myths. And so for a young audience, I wanted to take them
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back to the sort of genesis of all storytelling back into deep humanities time when we told stories to
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one another and how those stories became ultimately the fairy tale or well, I mean, we're skipping a
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lot became the epic. And then sort of Beowulf led to the romance and the romance led to
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the fairy tale and the fairy tale ultimately led talking in Lewis to write kind of these new
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mythologies for a new era. And so this book attempts to give a kind of thumbnail version of that
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story so that you can sort of place yourself in the middle of the history of the great romantic
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epic. Yeah, and I appreciated that you also included some of the sources which they were less
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familiar with from other cultures, which are part of this sort of global tradition, because of course
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they can't know everything, can they? So your lion and your visitor able to say, oh yes, it was
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also happening in India at the same time, which was I think that's why it's a good nonfiction
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source for that. So one of the things that struck me is how the friendship between T. S. Lewis
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and Tolkien itself has become a kind of myth. And so we want to tell us a little bit more about
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the story that writers and scholars have told about that and also your reflections on the nature
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of that that friendship. I mean, there is the theme of your book, of course, so I'm not expecting
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you to explain everything, but I'm interested in how the friendship itself has become mythologized.
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Well, this was actually the core of the idea to me was illustrated versions of Narnia and
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Middle-Earth. We have dozens of them and they're awesome. Every time a new edition comes out,
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I always get them. I'm obsessed with the way people visualize these subcreated worlds. But
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I had this idea that Lewis and Tolkien also subcreated a third thing, which was, as you said,
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their own friendship or the inklings. This vision of a literary life that is shared with friends
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in dark pubs talking about poetry or the greatest ideas of life at the end of a hard day,
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this is like as much of a fantasy as Narnia on some level. I am a university professor and I do
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not spend two to three days a week with my friends talking about poetry and pubs. And I wish I did.
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So I wanted to illustrate that version of that fantasy world. And honestly, it sort of now
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lives in Oxford as its own kind of idea of what this literary life is with your friends.
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And so yes, this was part of what I wanted to illustrate in this book and to let readers
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kind of step into that world a little bit just like they do Narnia and Middle Earth when they
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read their stories. I mean, I'm aware that the center I've created in Oxford is part of that
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mythologizing because we have a house in North Morode just down from Tolkien's house where people
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live. And we call them the inklings on the doorbell. It says the inklings, though they're from all
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over the world and male and female. So they don't fit the gender balance. How long until I can
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join that's basically. You're very welcome anytime. It's there for scholars to come as well.
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So, you know, seriously keeping in touch. But I think one of the things that I was thinking
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of reading this, you mentioned something which often gets forgotten in that story is not only
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where the Tuesday lunch times that England child, other pubs during the war when the beer run out.
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And the Thursday evenings in Morton College where the real sharing of work got done. But there
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was also a sort of bilateral friendship between Tolkien and Lewis at one point where they would
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meet at the East Gate Hotel, which is just across the road from Morton College and quite close
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to Martin as well. So they had it was definitely they were a focus when they were both creating,
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when they're really starting to get writing in a non-academic sense. And as you say, it's a huge
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amount of time that they spend doing this. So do you want to tell us a little bit about the
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bad fairies at the feast, not that they were bad fairies, but they had a sort of diluting effect.
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And that was Charles Williams and I suppose Hugo Dyson.
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Well, and I think it's actually I had somebody who wrote me who said like I had to put the book down
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when I realized that their friendship was was breaking apart or becoming strained and they didn't
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know about that part of the story and they were very sad. And they said, but I did pick the book back
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up because I said, I need to trust the author and where you're taking us on this story. And they
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said they were glad that they finished it. But yes, the sort of tragedy and triumph of their
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friendship was that they were fallible human beings just like all of us. And as their friendship
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became more and more important and others came into that circle, it created some tension. And
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I think Tolkien was clearly jealous of how much Lewis loved and admired and kind of even
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imitated Charles Williams's style and some of his writings. And Williams was also a very bold
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personality in the room. Tolkien was much more, you know, sort of by the way and very kind of
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mousey and some of his conversational style. So Williams was a real contrast to that. And Hugo
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Dyson, of course, very famously in a reading at one of the Inklings at Modeling College,
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as Tolkien pulled out another tone of Lord of the Rings, Hugo Dyson shouted out, oh God, not more
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elves. So there was a lot of tension within the group because they really did give honest feedback
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to one another. And I think that's on some level why the group was successful. And also why it had
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a lot of tension inherently baked into it. It is the kind of friendship circle you see in like
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teen girl movies where the new kid comes in and it's it upsets the dynamics. That's what it reminded
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me of. When I was reading the new edition of Tolkien's letters, one tiny little detail struck me,
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which was at one point he makes mention of Charles Williams actually typing up chapters of Lord of
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the Rings for him. So he was friends with Charles Williams. Yes.
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CS Lewis was a better friend, you know, the closer friend. So I think that's what was going on.
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And I think the other thing I was thinking about was we are saying, oh isn't it sad that it came
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to an end? But actually wasn't it amazing that it lasted as long as it did because I don't think I've
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ever been part of a friendship group friendship like that that has met so often and for so long.
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I can manage annual meetings with friends by certainly couldn't do it three times a week or
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twice a week. Yes. Yes. No, I think they're their friendship and their group of they really have
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inspired many, many artists over the years and community reading groups with their sort of
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faithfulness to one another over those many years. And you know, of course this side of
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heaven and the new creation, we are all going to experience loss and and their lives as it,
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you know, came to full bloom also eventually came to loss together. And I think there's a lot
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of explanations about that. It's it's it's tragic. It's also as a story really, really interesting.
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I mean, on some level, the arc of their story sort of mimics in in a way. I mean, I was writing a
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myth about them. And so in some ways, I felt like I had to give them a kind of mythic ending to
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that story to get to their own sort of eucotastrophe in this journey. But yeah, I think it's it's
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inevitable when you're studying groups of creatives like this to the dynamics of how those
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personalities interact. It's it's fascinating. One of the things which I've always
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been annoyed by is how when you go to university syllabus describing 20th century English literature
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that you'll have lots of room given to the Bloomsbury group, which was indeed a very important group.
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But very little I haven't seen anybody doing the same thing in a university syllabus to say,
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well, by the way, there was also this group called the Inklings. And by the way,
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they established major genres in fantasy and also with friends of T.S. Eliot and Dorothy L.
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says, you know, it seems as though there's a bias against looking at the Inklings seriously as
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a literary group in university world. Is that the same in America or is that just a UK phenomenon?
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Yeah, you know, that's interesting. I think I think it kind of depends on what place
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you're at. Perhaps I think in America, there is certainly, you know, it's sort of the thing a
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profit is never honored in own hometown. But they're certainly the Inklings in America have
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developed a sort of mythology to them. Now, you know, whether they that be perhaps because of their
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religious trappings, they are sort of seen in a different category than the Bloomsbury sort of
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classic high literature group and maybe Lewis and Tolkien. And Williams can be seen almost as
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writing more genre fiction. You know, I would say that's not really what they were doing. But
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yeah, I can certainly see that as a bias. They're also war writers in my view. But anyway,
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I think I think that is changing because I've noticed here's much more academic interest
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serious academic treatment of Tolkien now. Huge, globally, but also in the UK. So he's certainly,
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I think, crossed over into being sit treated seriously. But I haven't seen the rest of the Inklings
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moving with him, but it may come. It may come. So going to the story of their Christian friendship,
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I was wondering if you ever challenged yourself to think up an image to represent their two
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different church traditions because though they shared Christianity, they actually were from
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very different parts of the church. And would it be the differences between them?
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Yes, you know, I mean, and I think that can actually be attributed to some of what caused their
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tension in the later form of their life, especially as Lewis married a woman who was divorced.
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And I think he withheld that from Tolkien because he knew it would make him upset. But of course,
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the act of not telling one of your closest friends about your marriage, that is also a pretty
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big violation of trust. So yes, I think it's actually in our contemporary moment, it's hard to
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believe that the division between Anglican and Catholic would be so stark. But of course,
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the history of that, especially in the UK is quite tragic. And today we think, gosh, well,
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anybody who believes in God is probably basically on the same side of the ledger, right?
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But back then, the fact that they were close at all over that divide is actually just as
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interesting to me. So yeah, I think it's a great point. And they also, I'm going back to the
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Charles Williams presence. So he was even more challenging out there in this wacko-doodle
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bridge of believing in magic. Yeah, that's a technical term. But yeah, probably should we phrase
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that? I'll annoy the child. I tried it in the book because I said, like, when I described
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Williams as something like he believed in magic and not the fairy kind or something like that.
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Like, yeah, he had, I mean, I find his writing totally, I'm enamored by his stuff.
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And I find it enigmatic. It's hard to describe exactly, but I know I can see why Lewis was
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taken with it because there is a sort of real squirreli quality about the way he wrote that is
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quite, quite wonderful. I'm very daring. Each novel is a different genre. So totally.
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Moving fantasy. So yeah, I think he's totally fascinating.
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One of the elements which I really enjoyed was your summing up. I think it was in a conversation
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between the lion and the wizard about why they fell out, not just about their religious
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points of view, but also their approach to story because Tolkien didn't really warm to the
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world of Nania. And you summed it up as being a mythos logos division. She wanted to explain
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a little bit about that because I think it's fascinating. Yeah. And now this was something I tried to,
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I think, maybe scholars that really study them might be a little, you know, they might feel like
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this is too broad, but I tried to help readers think about the way they created stuff. And I use
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this divide of logos or word or logic versus mythos or story. And Tolkien's entire world came
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out of a building of a language, right? He made his Elvish languages because he wanted to figure
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out a way to make the a star shined on the hour of our greeting a sort of in-world myth that
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made sense. And so he made a language for that phrase. And then he made a people to inhabit that
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language and everything fall fell out of this logical like fine carpentry of building this world
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piece by piece so that it all made sense. And so Lewis on the contrast was much more
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interested in this holistic vision of the story, the sort of impression he had these images in his
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head of a of a fawn carrying a package in the snow and a lamppost in the woods. And so it was
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like, where does this come from? I don't know. And so Tolkien was, I think under the impression that
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Lewis was very slap-dash in his construction of mythology, the, you know, the father Christmas
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thing of fawns, you know, talking animals. It was all just to him a big, sloppy mishmash. And
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I think he felt some jealousy. I can't remember if this is in the book or not, but he sort of thought
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that Tolkien kind of stole some of his naming ideas from things. You mean Lewis stole from Tolkien?
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Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Lewis stole from Tolkien some of his naming sort of ideas. And he often sort
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of thought that like Lewis stole some stuff from, from Williams that Lewis was kind of like a
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magpie. He just kind of picked up stuff and ran with it. And so I think that left him feeling like
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Lewis had not done the hard work that Tolkien had done. I mean, Lewis wrote seven Narnia books
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in seven years and Tolkien spent 17 years just on Lord of the Rings. So you can see how that would
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create some creative tension in their friendship. It's interesting putting that alongside the sort of
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Michael Ward planet Narnia, which is actually made look as though it's thrown together. Actually,
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it's got a deeper planning underneath it. If you look a bit deeper, I don't know if you were
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convinced by Michael's argument on that. Okay. So just to give some context for listeners,
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amazing book by Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, which tries to deconstruct this idea that Narnia was
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kind of a slap-dash construction. And honestly, I went into that book very skeptical. It seemed like
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an insane premise to me, but he won me over. I mean, by halfway through the book, I was amazed.
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And it does track with what Lewis was like. To me, it just added up and it rang true to me.
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So I think he makes a very convincing argument that these books, even maybe if they weren't
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as logically and systematically planned as Tolkien's were, they were absolutely and intuitively
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designed as to mimic this mythological, medieval vision of the cosmos that Lewis was totally
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taken by. And so yes, I really love that book. Yeah, so that's another for the reading list.
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That's right. You mentioned at the end that you had to leave things out to fit the story.
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Was there something that one of them I totally agreed with? If you're writing for younger people,
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you don't want to talk about the machinations of academics trying to get colleagues selected to
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chairs. So it's just not going to be interesting, is it? It's super, it's super uninteresting, but I
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nerdy. But the importance of them, it was really important to me. And I had to cut it. Yeah, fair
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enough. Good, good choice. But was there perhaps an unattractive story, vignette that you really
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wanted to get in, but it didn't fit in with the main story, which is around their friendship.
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You know, things outside their friendship, which didn't fit in this story.
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I think the story of Pauline Baines, and who was the illustrator for people no Narnia, but also
29:52
Middle Earth. And actually, Tolkien was the one that brought her to Lewis. That I had to leave
29:59
basically that whole narrative out, even though it's actually really relevant to their friendship.
30:04
It just, it felt like a, it felt like a sidecar to the story. And literally every page had to be
30:10
used well, because I was just cramming so much in. So that's, that's one I left out. I mean,
30:16
I don't think I even mentioned till we have faces, which is Lewis's, you know, self-described
30:21
favorite book that he wrote most likely with Joy, his wife. And that, you know, that's another one
30:27
like, I don't know how I didn't really talk about that. But again, I'm trying to keep the main
30:32
story, the main thing with this particular audience. I'd love to see an illustrated version of
30:37
till we have faces, by the way. So I'll do it. Yeah, I'll do it right now. Let's get the
30:41
Lewis date on the phone. I'm ready. He's a fantastic and surprising novel, because it's told
30:47
from a female point of view. And it's a, right. Retelling of the psyche myth, but focused on her sister.
30:55
So really, really surprising. You would not guess it's written by the same person as who wrote
31:01
Narnia. That's been a fascinating romp through Mythmakers, John. And it was the perfect
31:06
Christmas gift for those of you who are listening to give your bookish fan of Tolkien or Narnia,
31:16
who is ready to hear about the authors. But it's also, I would say, not just for children.
31:21
There is levels and elements in this, which an adult would really appreciate it. And if you don't,
31:29
if you don't feel like sitting down reading one of these scholarly works, you'll get pretty much
31:33
everything you need to, to be honest, in your version of it. So I would highly recommend it
31:39
for adults too. We always have a little question at the end of our Mythmakers episodes where we
31:46
think about where in all the fantasy world, so leaving behind just Oxford fantasy, we can go
31:50
to Star Wars, we can go Star Trek. We always think where in all the fantasy world is the best place
31:57
to do or be something. And I was wondering where you thought would be the best place to be a
32:04
cartoonist, taking the idea of geographic novel. You can mention some of the dangerous places
32:10
to be a cartoonist, because I think particularly if you're in the world of political cartoons,
32:13
you might want to avoid some fantasy world. But do you have a pick where you'd like to sit down
32:19
and be a cartoonist? Oh, man. I mean, I read all of the Game of Thrones books and was really lost
32:27
inside that story in a really wonderful way, which is, it's such a critique of Tolkien in a
32:32
way, while also being a love letter to Tolkien. So yeah, you know, maybe if I was posted on the
32:39
Great North wall, I would like to draw from that point of view, perhaps. But yeah, you know,
32:45
I actually, there are some, even in the Harry Potter universe, there are, I believe some
32:50
political cartoons that appear in the, in the daily profit, I think. But again, that, you know,
32:57
that's interesting to think of how drawings and cartoons interact with fantastical worlds.
33:02
But yeah, that's a great question. And you'd get the chance to make your cartoons moving
33:07
in the Harry Potter world in that. Yes, that's amazing. That's right. So that would be a very good
33:12
pick. I think for me, those are all excellent suggestions. I think it would be quite fun to
33:19
be a cartoonist. Well, it would not be fun, would be in the world of Star Wars under the Emperor.
33:29
No, yeah, that's right. You'd be part of, you know, Admiral Akbar's sort of propaganda team or
33:35
something. But that could be quite fun. But short lived. I think I'd like to go somewhere that's
33:42
got a really sort of vibrant life with markets and people and different cultures. So I was thinking
33:53
there's a American writer called Timura Pierce, who has created a world of knights and lady knights
34:00
and legends. And I would like to be in the market at total, which is like her main capital. So they've
34:06
got an enlightened king then. So I probably would survive. I'd like to be there.
34:11
Oh, that's great. I'd like to draw magic as well. That's awesome. Thank you very much.
34:15
And John for joining us. And good luck with the next project. Have you got anything on the cards
34:21
at the moment? You can tell us or is yes. You know, my editor gives me two weeks to take a
34:26
break and then we start the next one. Oh, right. No, the thing on my desk right now is a sequel to
34:35
Drawing His Magic, which is my sketchbook workbook about how you generate your own ideas. So I've
34:40
got a sequel to that called 100 Things. And that will be out next year. But the next long form
34:47
graphic novel I'm working on is going to be a retelling of the Salem witch trials. Wow. Yes,
34:56
I wanted to do a scary book. I've always loved this story. I've been fascinated by its sort of
35:01
mystery. And most people, if they they probably have like red or watch The Crucible and that's about
35:08
all they know about it. And Crucible is great, but it's, you know, a work of art. It's really not
35:13
the full story. So it's much weirder and scarier than you think. Wow. That is quite a mic drop
35:20
moment. I look forward to reading that book because as you say, it's a fascinating story.
35:26
Thank you so much for being with us, John. Okay. Bye-bye.
35:32
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