By Louise Roberts, Reading Room Assistant
This summer, we are looking forward to welcoming Michael J. Christensen to Gladstone’s Library to discuss and read the works of ‘The Inklings’ with attendees of his course. This exciting event is taking place from Friday 12th August to Sunday 14th August and includes readings, lectures, and good company!
The Inklings were a group of literary figures that included C.S. Lewis, (known as Jack), J.R.R. Tolkien and his son Christopher, the editor and fantasy novelist Charles Williams, and the philosopher and author Owen Barfield. They held informal group meetings at the Oxford pub, ‘The Eagle and Child’ (also known as the Bird and Baby,) and in college rooms, to listen to extracts from their writing and to discuss their projects. We hope our participants will be inspired to continue this conversation at the Inklings event this summer, which will include sessions on Myth and Meaning and Romantic Theology. The events will take place in the comfortable surroundings of Gladstone’s Library and will include free permits to enjoy a walk in Hawarden Park and discover the local area. 
A selection of C. S. Lewis books from the library collection
Back in June 1984, a C.S. Lewis Summer School was held, here, at Gladstone’s Library (then St. Deiniol’s Library). During that early summer weekend, admirers and close friends of the author gathered to discuss the Inklings and their work.
The principal speakers at the conference were Father Walter Hooper, Harry Blamires, and Professor John Lawlor.
They each had wonderful recollections of Jack Lewis, as both friend and writer. Father Walter Hooper was an academic in the United States but after becoming a friend of Lewis, gave up his position at the university and became Lewis’s secretary. Hooper eventually became the executor of the literary estate of C.S. Lewis. Blamires and Lawlor were also former students of Lewis’ at Oxford, where Lawlor was also a postgraduate student under Tolkien. The weekend event at the library, also included talks by Martin Moynihan, described as the ‘moderator and guide’ for the summer school. Martin Moynihan edited Lewis’s Latin letters, and he also appears in the 1979 film Through Joy and Beyond, about the life of C. S. Lewis.
While researching the collections at Gladstone’s for information about The Inklings prior to this summer’s event, it was fascinating to read a typed account of the C.S. Lewis summer school of 1984 and discover who had taken part in that event. This account, held at classmark 92/A/12, includes a transcript of a tape-recorded interview which took place as part of the weekend’s events. This interview was conducted by Martin Moynihan, who talked to the children’s writer, Roger Lancelyn Green, a close friend of Lewis, about their friendship and Lewis’s work.
During the interview, Lancelyn Green stated that Lewis asked him to read the Narnia stories before publication. Lancelyn Green believed that Lewis asked him to read the unpublished manuscripts because he was a biographer and children’s writer, and Lewis valued his literary opinion. Lancelyn Green and Father Hooper also wrote a biography of Lewis, and Green edited the diaries of Lewis Carroll.
There is also reference in the account to the lectures given that weekend, including those of John Lawlor. Lawlor discussed the Narnia books, and the account offers a wonderful insight into his opinion on them from the perspective of both a friend of Lewis and a fellow academic. Lawlor said that his personal favourite was The Silver Chair, which he believed was the best because it contains a 'fertile and humorous imagination and execution.’ Lawlor also talked about C.S. Lewis’s other literary works, including Allegory of Love, and Lewis’s final book, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.
A box of pamphlets and ephemera relating to C. S. Lewis held in the collections at Gladstone’s Library [92/A/1-21]
In the report, St Deiniol's is described as being 'a sprawling and stately stone structure with slate roof, and spacious grounds (complete with croquet course, but not cricket)' and having 'a magnificent view of the countryside from the third floor landing with a coin-operated machine if you want electricity (50p)'. The visitors were 'genuinely welcomed, almost as if we were a pair of favourite slippers which had been lost and just now returned. And everything exuded warmth and friendship'.
The grounds, architecture and warm welcome remain today, although attendees of the upcoming Inklings event will not have access to a croquet course, nor will they have to pay for electricity as the summer school delegates were obliged to. There is also still no cricket at the Library!
These, and other details in the report, which is extensive (at 26 pages long), offer really interesting opportunities to compare what Gladstone's Library is like now to how it was as St Deiniol's almost 40 years ago. The report itself, which is written in a literary tone, more like a personal essay written for a group of intimates than the minutes of a meeting, evokes a real feeling of friendship among the attendees - a fellowship, perhaps.
At the end of the day's lectures, the group also enjoyed pints of bitter during visits to the Fox and Grapes pub just across the road from St Deiniol’s and a trip to visit Cheshire manor house Poulton Hall, the ancestral home of Lancelyn Green
What a wonderful summer event it must have been in 1984. Now we can look forward to this August, and another weekend of fellowship, and we hope you will join us to celebrate both C.S. Lewis and The Inklings once again.
Signatures of Walter Hooper, John Lawlor and Martin Moynihan in the guest book, at St Deiniol’s Library, 1984