Part One (leaked by Larry Repass) My Dear Larvalog, You ARE full of surprises! First, you pulled that stunt at the Super-D Store last year, and now you have the gall to write to your “loving uncle” for advice! Well, don’t think for a minute that I would be swayed by your flowery appeal to a possible correspondence similar to Read More ›
Imagine the surprise of Perry Bramlett when he picked up a first edition copy of Poems by C. S. Lewis (1964) in a used book store and found that it was autographed by Walter Hooper. This was Hooper’s very first publication, his first foray into C. S. Lewis studies, and his first revelation of alternative versions of works that C. Read More ›
In his evocative 4-page 1997 fundraising letter, Douglas Gresham claimed that Stanley Mattson’s C. S. Lewis Foundation had already completed 88% of the work needed to restore the Kilns to its original 1930s condition. (Not 87% or 89%, but exactly 88%.) “Would you, therefore, consider making a gift in any amount to help the C. S. Lewis Foundation attain their Read More ›
Doug Gresham’s 1997 fundraising letter began, “Four miles from the towering spires of Oxford lies a modest brick home. A single glance would lead one to believe that the resident family had decided to restore the 72-year-old house. They would be right about the restoration, but the family…, well, that is a bit more complex. “Within the walls of this Read More ›
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 ›