The Inklings and Friends
Oxford, C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien and Friends
Pitiful Caliban and Gollum
Here is one of the essays from my book Reluctant Allies: Essays on Eliot and the Inklings. J.R.R.Tolkien was famously antipathetic towards Shakespeare, and there is no suggestion that the beastly Caliban inspired Middle Earth’s [...]
Confessions of an Anglophile
I became infected with this most deadly disease when I was ten years old. The 1966 World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook arrived, and working my way through it I came across the obituary of T.S.Eliot. [...]
Lockdown T.S.Eliot Book Club – 5
By now I hope you have learned a bit more about T.S.Eliot and his poetry. I'm afraid the response to the T.S.Eliot Book Club has not been as enthusiastic as I would have liked. [...]
Eliot’s Daring Surrender
Welcome to the fourth installment of our Lockdown T.S.Eliot Book Club. In the last installment I tried to explain how to understand Eliot's work. It is as if you are given a puzzle to [...]
Understanding Eliot
Welcome to the third installment of the Lockdown T.S.Eliot Book Club! I'm sorry these posts have not been as frequent as I had hoped, but my life, like all of ours, has been turned [...]
Eliot’s Early Years Part Two
Thanks to the good number of readers who have joined our Lockdown T.S.Eliot Book Club! I hope you have begun to get into the head and heart of this most fascinating and (as we [...]