The Inklings with Michael J. Christensen

The Inklings with Michael J. Christensen

Friday 12th to Sunday 14th August, 2022

The Oxford Inklings were an informal group of literary friends that met on Tuesday mornings at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford (aka “The Bird and Baby”) for spirited conversation and on Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College to read aloud poems and extracts from books they were writing.

The fellowship included Jack Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and his son Christopher, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield amongst others. They met regularly through the 1930s and 1940s and left a literary legacy of romantic theology.

As Lewis describes these twice-weekly meetings of friends: “Those are the golden sessions…when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbow; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk…” (The Four Loves)


Programme

Friday 12th August
5pm Introductions
6pm Dinner
7:30pm Readings from the mythopoetic works of the Inklings

Saturday 13th August
8am Breakfast
9:30pm First Session: Meet the Fellowship
10:30pm Coffee
11:00pm Second Session: What is “Romantic Theology”?
12:30pm Lunch
Afternoon Free (permits available to walk in Hawarden Park)
5pm Third Session: Faith and Fantasy; Myth and Meaning
6pm Dinner
7:30pm The Hobbit (1977, Jules Bass, Arthur Rankin Jr, 77 min).

Sunday 14th
8pm Breakfast
10pm Fourth Session: The Future of Romantic Religion
11pm Coffee
11:30pm Eucharist [in the spirit of the Holy Grail]
1:30pm Lunch and Depart

Text: The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Glyer (available from Amazon UK or Amazon US). 
--

Places start at £330 for one person in a single room and £220 for non-residential attendance. Discounts are available for clergy/students.

For more information or to book, please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected]. Reception is open from 8am to 8pm. Please leave a message with your name, number and preferred booking if calling outside those hours.