The Lewis Legacy-Issue 82, Autumn 1999 Notes and Quotes

“… when I was commissioned by a publisher to write the life of C.S. Lewis, I thought ‘Oh, good, I am going to enjoy this very, very much.’ And I did enjoy it, but I found, in the course of writing that book, something had happened to me. I wouldn’t put it as strongly as to say that I had lost my religious faith because I don’t think I have, exactly speaking, but I
realized what Lewis called ‘mere Christianity’ — in the way that he defines it — was not a position which I had entertained in some years. … “

A. N. Wilson, in an interview in Books & Culture, Sept/Oct 1999, about God’s Funeral.

“What will he [A. N. Wilson] choose for the next turnaround/ Islam? A sex-change?”

a TV critic in Private Eye in 1991

I was in California recently and did the scenic seventeen-mile drive around Pebble Beach. We stopped and gazed at a famous landmark, the Lone Cyprus, a tree growing out of a rocky island in the Pacific Ocean. It is a very beautiful thing to see, but I noticed that a sign was posted at the viewing spot stating that no one could take a photograph of the tree or paint it if one intended to sell the photo or painting because (get this), it was copyrighted! The tree was some company’s logo, the sign said, and the image belonged to them and could not be reproduced or sold! That floored me and, of course, made me think of the excesses of the Lewis Estate on copyright. Lewis once talked about gazing at the hills outside his home in Belfast. Maybe the Lewis estate will now insist this image belongs to them and no one can photograph it without paying them money. It seems that not even scenes from God’s creation are safe from the copyright lawyers.

David W. Landrum, on MereLewis.

Not to be, but to seem, virtuous — it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.

C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 51.