On the most profound level, "Perelandra" deals with the mystery of freedom itself. How can a person with free will choose the good in the presence of seductive evil? My recent essay, “C.S. Lewis Goes to Mars”, discussed the deep philosophical underpinnings of Lewis’ novel, Out of the Silent Planet, which was the first of [...]
"Out of the Silent Planet" invites us to see the way that each of the three main characters grasps, or fails to grasp, the radical new perspectives offered by the encounter with alien species in a physically strange place and a metaphysically stranger “space”; ultimately, it invites us to judge the philosophies which inform or [...]
As an indomitable culture warrior and soldier of Christ, James Como died with his boots on, working in the Lewisian vineyard in which he had laboured for almost six decades. “Having labored in the Lewisian vineyard for nearly six decades I rejoice in the vitality of the laborers now reaping the grapes of joy.” These [...]
Considering Chesterton’s childlike relationship with children, it seems somehow apt that a new biography of him has been written for children. One of the great and almost secret regrets of G.K. Chesterton and his wife Frances was the sad fact that they were never able to have children. Frances had undergone an operation to help [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien is not only the greatest mythmaker of the 20th century, he is our equivalent of Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Just as we read "The Divine Comedy" and come to understand the late Middle Ages, so will someone, five hundred years from now, read Tolkien to understand our era. I’ve had the opportunity to [...]
C.S. Lewis possessed an immense personality, the kind of personality that affected not only those around him, but also all those who came after him. Full of charisma and brilliance, he both attracted loyal friends and made bitter enemies wherever he went. Strangely enough, I didn’t come to C.S. Lewis as a person or as [...]
As a literary scholar, C.S. Lewis’s principal concern in his "Reflections on the Psalms" is to vindicate the Psalms as poetry and, therefore, vehicles of beauty, delight, and even (as he boldly puts it) “mirth.” These are things which, Lewis says, modern humanity needs badly. One of the great constants in my life has been [...]
When a lover of poetry as sensitive and intelligent as C.S. Lewis provides us a translation of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” we should pay attention. C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile, edited by A.T. Reyes (184 pages, Yale University Press, 2011) Every poetic translator worth our attention is, as it were, a secondary artist, one [...]
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 [...]
C.S. Lewis’s range of work—at a very high level, done with pellucid clarity and frequent epigrammatic wit—places him at, or near, the top of literary figures writing in English since the seventeenth century. In a recent issue of The Spectator (August 2025), Alexander Laman treated us to “Still Roaring,” a left-handed recognition of the staying [...]
What is this fear of spiders? There is a natural fear of venomous creatures, but the spider’s venom is not the only threat. She spins a web. She entraps her prey. She wraps them tightly to eat them later. As the ghost in Hamlet cries about his own venomous murder: “O Horrible, O horrible, most [...]
Dale Ahlquist's "I Also Had My Hour" stands the art of autobiography on it head so that we can see G.K. Chesterton afresh from new angles, much as Chesterton himself stood truth on its head so that we could see it afresh from new angles. I Also Had My Hour: An Alternative Autobiography of G. [...]
Challenging a number of schools of thought in economics and political philosophy, Andrew Willard Jones in his book, "The Church Against the State," presents an unapologetically Catholic and specifically Thomist view of the world and, in particular, of America. Jones argues that America, in her own unique fashion, blends that which is venerable and ancient [...]
The modern political conflict goes much deeper than the old party struggle. It has become a battle of ideas and beliefs. Practical politics are not enough. We need a Conservative sociology to set against the Socialist theory of society, and a spiritual ideal of Conservative order to meet the idealism of revolution. Introduction and Notes by [...]