The vagaries of copyright law can be not only surprising, but amazing. In July 1997 London’s Observer reported that according to some lawyers, the River Kwai in Thailand does not exist. This claim infuriates surviving World War Two prisoners of the Japanese. In 1942 and 1943 Allied prisoners were forced to build a 250-mile railway to Burma for their captors, Read More ›
The C. S. Lewis Journal is listed in publicity as edited by Susan Wavre for the English publisher Eagle. I don’t know why Eagle leaves my name off, because I’m the author Wavre edited. Using my book of 365 days, Around the Year with C. S. Lewis and His Friends (Gibson, 1986, out of print), Wavre pulled out bits at Read More ›
It doesn’t altogether surprise me that A. L. Rowse said K. B. McFarlane detested Lewis. Apparently Magdalen College in their day was a real snake-pit of academic hates and intrigues. Probably that was, and is, true of a great many colleges, the typical academic personality being what it is. (And I’m one myself, and so was my father, and both Read More ›
When Lawrence X. (Lex) Cusack went through the papers of his deceased father, a New York attorney, he discovered secret documents signed by John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, revealing details about their affair. Cusack reportedly sold some of the papers to collectors for $4 million. In 1994 Cusack turned other key papers over to respected Pultizer-prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Read More ›
In 1271, four years before Marco Polo arrived in China, a Jewish-Italian merchant named Jacob d’Antona arrived first. He wrote an account of what he found there, and it survived on 280 loose leaves of paper wrapped in silk. He describes in vivid detail his adventures in the city of Zaitun (today’s Quanzhou). The manuscript belongs to an anonymous Italian Read More ›
Address delivered at the C.S. Lewis Centennial Celebration, Seattle, Washington, June 1998 There I was, halfway through writing a bad lecture that I thought was a good one for occasion, when I misplaced it down my computer’s infinitely voracious memory hole, while Raphael, the guardian angel for absent-minded professors and travelers, was distracted by my dog. (Raphael has a Thing Read More ›
When Lewis first read Wordsworth’s Prelude in 1919, at the age of 21, he was not very impressed by it. He reported the following to Arthur Greeves: "You will perhaps be surprised to hear that I am reading ‘The Prelude’ by way of graduating in Wordsworth-ism. What’s even funnier, I rather like it! I’m coming to the conclusion that there Read More ›
For a long time literary snobs have sneered at science fiction, considering it something other than serious literature. C. S. Lewis knew better. Coming of age early in this century, his generation was as captivated by H. G. Wells’s stories of space and time travel as today’s generation is by movies and television programs on those same themes. In his Read More ›
It is increasingly difficult to say anything new about C. S. Lewis; perhaps you have noticed. And to say that he was a responsible scholar appears to be among the least interesting things to say; but no statement is truer. By "scholar," I refer to one whose vocation is academic inquiry, one who marshals evidence in the pursuit of theses Read More ›
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. –G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World Now theology is like the map… Consequently, if you do not listen to theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of Read More ›