No Picture
C.S. Lewis

Down the pub with Tolkien and C. S. Lewis

There is magic in the last line of The Lord of the Rings. To recap: the stolidly courageous Sam Gamgee, having watched his best friend, Frodo Baggins, sail towards the Grey Havens and into a kind of death, is left to walk back to the Shire where he finds his wife and children waiting with the promise of a quiet life far from the slaughter of the War of the Ring. J. R. R. Tolkien finishes with the sentence: “‘Well, I’m back,’ he said”. It is a touchingly understated conclusion which returns the prose to the homely simplicity of the inaugural chapters after the archaic epic mode of The Return of the King.

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No Picture
C.S. Lewis

Shadowlands of Narnia

IN ACCOUNTS OF 20TH-CENTURY LITERARY movements and happenings, the 1950s is often ignored. Yet this decade, viewed as a quiet time in English literature, birthed three of the greatest-ever series: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy was completed, as was JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. And CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, seven volumes, topped them all.

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