IN MARCH 1999 Ed Brown announced on MERELEWIS that he has put to rest the claim that Walter Hooper’s 1975 bonfire story is false. Ed is a good-hearted man who means well, but he has never read my two books and several articles about the subject and has no idea that his is the ninth bogus proof that has been Read More ›
THE QUESTION: Is It True? On 19 March 1963, C. S. Lewis wrote to an American lady: I am thrilled to hear that San Suez [her pet dog] has a sweater! Is this part of the demarche (it’s in all our papers) which a body of American women are making to the President [Kennedy] to get animals properly clothed “in Read More ›
Dear Sirs, With regard to Tom Bethell’s article “Controversy in Shadowlands” in your September, 1998 issue, I am disheartened to see an otherwise fine magazine engaging in needless controversy. The much-ballyhooed charge that Walter Hooper forged The Dark Tower is so far from reality as to defy belief, and one wonders why it is still being repeated. Consider the following: Read More ›
The Wonders of International E-Mail On 26 April, Bill Fong, the son of immigrant parents from China, sent Kathryn Lindskoog an e-mail from Sacramento, CA, introducing himself and asking, among other things, if Lewis had been translated into Chinese. Fong, who had once been a classics major and studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, said he was no longer fluent in Read More ›
Douglas Gresham has revealed, “Because of a publisher’s error, The Screwtape Letters was at one time in the public domain in the USA. This allowed certain unscrupulous and untalented Americans to simply grab it and do whatever they wanted with it. I have not seen any Americanised version but I don’t doubt that someone did such a thing.” This raises an interesting question. Read More ›
Five weeks after Lewis signed his will, he added the following afterthought. THIS IS THE FIRST CODICIL made the tenth day of December One thousand nine hundred and sixty-one to the will of me CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS of the Kilns Headington Quarry in the County of Oxford Professor of the University of Cambridge made the Second day of November One Read More ›
The Dark Tower manuscript is written on two kinds of paper. Pages 1-18 are on paper with vertical watermarks and 34 ruled lines. Pages 19-64 have horizontal watermarks and 35 ruled lines. Pages 19-64 are slightly narrower than pp. 1-18 and look newer. Perhaps a forger could not get enough sheets of the first kind of paper to complete the Read More ›
by James O’Fee The Norman knight William de Warenne was one of the most powerful of William the Conqueror’s barons. (His bones lie in Battle Abbey.) De Warrenne was given lands in Sussex. He built Lewes (sic) Castle and is buried (I think) in Lewes Priory. (I lived in Lewes for a while, the county town of East Sussex.) William Read More ›
In 1984 the Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, IL, published a new one-hour play for children by Aurand Harris. Harris was at that time the most published and produced playwright for children, with 35 plays and 16 awards to his credit. His plays are for child audiences, not child actors. This one premiered at the University of Texas in Austin, Read More ›
“Somewhere in my Miracles (I can’t lay my hands on a single copy of it at the moment) you find a footnote telling you a little more about my view of myth and history in the Old Testament. There may, I suppose, have been two actual (i.e. physical) trees: but in what sense they could have been of life and Read More ›