Sir Martin Gilbert and the Inklings

By |2024-02-23T18:05:16-06:00February 23rd, 2024|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Oxford University, Timeless Essays|

Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, knew J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Inklings personally. At one memorable lunch, Sir Martin gave me his impressions of these great men and of the Oxford of their day. During my time at Hillsdale College—having arrived in the fall of 1999—the college hired a number [...]

C.S. Lewis’ “Old Western Men”

By |2022-12-19T19:18:12-06:00December 19th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Inklings, Senior Contributors|

On November 29, 1954, C.S. Lewis offered his inaugural address at Cambridge, one of his finest writings or speeches in his professional career, “De Descriptione Temporum.”[1] In the speech, probably somewhat jarring to his listeners, Lewis claimed that one could divide the history of Europe into three periods: the pre-Christian; the Christian; and the post-Christian. [...]

The Inklings and the Outbreak of World War II

By |2022-12-14T14:09:09-06:00December 14th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Senior Contributors, World War II|

Most of the Inklings had already gone through one world war, and when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, they knew that their children—especially J.R.R. Tolkien’s sons—would have to go through a second one. It was all quite depressing. In September 1939, war descended upon Europe as the National Socialists of Germany and the international [...]

Owen Barfield’s “History in English Words”

By |2022-08-09T10:50:00-05:00August 8th, 2022|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Inklings, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization|

Throughout "History in English Words," Owen Barfield discusses the influences of every possible cultural encounter on the English language. Language, he demonstrates, never stops in its evolution, moving from one point, one thought, one epoch to another, always shifting, always changing, but also always honoring. An extraordinary man by any measure, Owen Barfield (1898-1997), one [...]

Owen Barfield’s Commonwealth of the Spirit

By |2021-03-30T15:27:10-05:00March 31st, 2021|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Community, Inklings, Senior Contributors|

Owen Barfield called upon the men of the Western world to form themselves into a “commonwealth of the spirit” in which there is no copyright. To create a commonwealth of the soul, we need to know the limits and range of individualism as well as the limits and range of national character. Shortly after Great [...]

The Romantic Theology of Charles Williams

By |2023-02-14T10:14:14-06:00December 4th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, Culture, Inklings, Love, Marriage, Religion, Senior Contributors, Theology|

Just as we consume the Eucharist at Mass, recognizing the holiness of the act, so some marriages become profound examples and witnesses of holiness. By habit and faith, Charles Williams contended, the serious Christian begins to see all meals as a shadow of the Eucharist and all love as a shadow of Holy Matrimony. A [...]

Living in the Same Spiritual World: C.S. Lewis & Charles Williams

By |2019-12-01T22:01:42-06:00December 1st, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Character, Christianity, Imagination, Inklings, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Charles Williams joined the Inklings immediately after Oxford University Press moved its offices from London to Oxford because of the war with Germany. Though C.S. Lewis found Williams’ work compelling, even life-changing, the other members expressed doubts. “I had a pleasant evening on Thursday with Williams, Tolkien, and Wrenn, during which Wrenn expressed ALMOST seriously [...]

A Forgotten Inkling: Lord David Cecil

By |2019-11-21T01:20:24-06:00November 20th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Character, Christianity, Imagination, Inklings, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Lord David Cecil not only contributed more to the Inklings overall than did some of its other members, he was also the first of the Inklings to achieve fame, though few remember him now. Though most scholars have focused on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams as the key Inklings, the other [...]

Lord David Cecil’s Philosophy of History

By |2019-11-18T14:53:33-06:00November 15th, 2019|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Imagination, Inklings, Literature, Senior Contributors|

A deep and sympathetic biography of the troubled eighteenth-century proto-Romantic poet and classicist, William Cowper, The Stricken Deer (1929) reveals the genius of its author, a young and determined Lord David Cecil, one of the most important, if forgotten, members of the Inklings. Cecil found the key to understanding Cowper in the mad poet’s embrace [...]

The Earliest Days of the Inklings

By |2019-09-30T23:36:32-05:00September 30th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Imagination, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis talked, dined, drank, and walked together. And then, other friendships began to form around this critical one. Some arrived by chance, some by circumstance, and others by design. Eventually, they adopted a name: “The Inklings.” With the friendship of Tolkien and Lewis having grown into something almost preternaturally solid, one [...]

“The Pilgrim’s Regress”: The Allegory of C.S. Lewis’ Conversion

By |2021-04-22T17:54:09-05:00July 29th, 2019|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Fiction, Inklings, Literature, Senior Contributors|

In “The Pilgrim’s Regress,” C.S. Lewis fictionally traces his own intellectual and faith journey. As Lewis wrote ten years after the book’s first publication, “All good allegory exists not to hide but to reveal: to make the inner world more palpable by giving it an (imagined) concrete embodiment.” During the thirty-one years that C.S. Lewis [...]

Was Owen Barfield an Inkling?

By |2019-07-25T22:12:31-05:00July 25th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Friendship, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Any right-thinking individual, then or now, would want to have Owen Barfield as a vital and central member of the Inklings. Yet placing Barfield within the Inklings is incredibly difficult, given that he attended fewer than ten percent of the total meetings, and could not name the beginning or the end of the group. The [...]

World War I and the Inklings

By |2019-07-18T21:38:17-05:00July 18th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors, War, World War I|

The Great War destroyed much the Inklings had held true, personally and culturally. Each lost friends, and each felt the guilt that any survivor of a war feels. Many of them refused to talk about their own experiences, for good or ill. J.R.R. Tolkien, perhaps, provides the best example. Though not the best-known Inkling, Adam [...]

Friendship Among the Inklings

By |2022-12-30T15:54:20-06:00July 5th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Friendship, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

J.R.R. Tolkien not only held onto friendship for dear life, but he also incorporated it into every aspect of his literary mythology. And for the Inklings, friendship had a mystical element. “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire?” C.S. Lewis once famously asked. Surely not, he [...]

Go to Top