Can’t wait for 4 November, folks. We have some phenomenal proposals for ‘C.S. Lewis & Last Things’. This is going to be a barnstorming day. Join keynotes Jerry Root, Malcolm Guite & scholars from around the world. Full schedule out soon! Book tickets now! eventbrite.co.uk/e/cs-lewis-sym…

We’re nearly there! Just one more day till submissions close (4 September).

A favourite moment in Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet is when the petulant prisoner Weston—in the presence of Mars’s tutelary spirit & untold numbers of vastly superior creatures—brazenly protests, ‘Why you take our puff-bangs away? We very angry with you. We not afraid.’

Submissions are officially closed for ‘C.S. Lewis and Last Things’. What a terrific response! We’ve received so many fascinating proposals from around the world— all of which deeply and directly engage with our topic. 4 November 2024 is going to be a brilliant day in Belfast! 🔥

Just your friendly reminder that it’s only 110 days to Christmas!!! 🎄🎅🥳 So what better time than to book your festive Christmas show to get you in the spirit!! Embrace the magic this year with a show for all the family🪄 🎟️ ticketsource.co.uk/brightumbrella

Thrilled to learn from The C.S. Lewis Group of Northern Ireland my paper, “‘Lest You Cease to be Talking Beasts’: Speech, Silence, & Language in Lewis’s The Last Battle,” has been accepted for the C.S. Lewis Symposium at Union Seminary in Belfast. Excited to hear from all the speakers, incl. Malcolm Guite!

STAR TREK premiered on NBC on this day in 1966.

Long Tailed Tit close up .... just look at the sweet eye. 😍 Taken this week at Durleigh reservoir in Somerset. Good morning everyone! 👋😊🐦

This section of Out of the Silent Planet in which Weston delivers his triumphalist speech to the Oyarsa (tutelary spirit of Mars), makes clear how much Weston’s quest for immortality is a dark parody of the eternity promised in the Gospels, ‘which eye hath not seen nor ear heard’

I’m delighted to say that I’m not just attending this stellar day of talks about ‘C.S. Lewis & Last Things,’ but that I’ll also be one of the talkers. 😂 I’m going to explore Lewis and song as creation and re-creation in his work. Thom Yorke may even get a mention! See you there.

Delighted to report this old chunk of coal has been invited to address The Centre for the Study of Platonism at Cambridge University on the subject of my recently completed PhD (on CS Lewis & TS Eliot). This will be the project’s first full post-viva public airing. Very excited!

The annual Steinbeck Festival 2024/25 photography competition is officially open!! The theme this year is ‘Leaving’ so get creative & check out steinbeckfestival.com for more information & how to enter #photographer

Experience the magic this Christmas with a show for all the family🪄✨🎄🎅🤶🎁 🎭 The Magician’s Nephew 🎟️ brightumbrella.co.uk/the-magicians-… 📆 Tues 10th Dec 2024 - Sat 4th Jan 2025 ⏰ Check website for individual performance times 📍 The Sanctuary Theatre, 1a Castlereagh St, Belfast.

The “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” begins today. John Keats wrote these immortal autumnal words 205 years ago, 19 September 1819, whilst walking along the River Itchen near Winchester. “To Autumn” was his last major poem before his death in 1821 at the age of 25.

Let no one who wants to do anything for the soul of a man lose a chance of doing something for his body.

Reading John of the Cross’s ‘The Spiritual Canticle’ and am reminded, in these stanzas, of the moment in Plato’s cave allegory where the freed prisoner returns to the cave and finds he’s lost his former ‘knowledge’.

Another gem by the late great lay theologian/apologist Frank Sheed on man’s role in uniting spirit and matter, or what C.S. Lewis referred to as man’s ‘amphibian’ quality. From Sheed’s book, Theology & Sanity (1946):