ENTHUSIASTS for the works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien will recognise in the title of this excellent Lent book the former’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the latter’s The Lord of the Rings. They were the best-known members of a group of some seventeen men known as the Inklings, Oxford academics who met regularly in the Eagle and Child, one of the pubs in central Oxford. Among their friends were T. S. Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers, the only woman associated with the all-male Inklings.
One of the three authors contributes a reflection for each day of Lent and Holy Week. They are mostly based on the works of Lewis and Tolkien, though sometimes on those of other Inklings or their friends. Their chosen episode or theme is related to some aspect of Christian faith and life. Each section concludes with a reflection for the reader to ponder, and a passage of scripture to read.
Here are three examples. On Ash Wednesday, the theme is temptation and the harmful results of giving way to it. The illustration is Edmund’s yielding to the White Witch’s temptation in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and its consequences. How to face difficult circumstances with courage and resilience is illustrated on Saturday in the second week of Lent by Gandalf’s advice to Frodo, who has just discovered that the Ring that he possesses is the ultimate weapon and prize of the enemy. Holy Saturday brings the destruction of the Ring and the collapse of Sauron’s dark kingdom. That victory becomes apparent on Easter Day, when the Christ-like figure of Aslan the lion, who has allowed himself to be killed, rises from death, so bringing the reign of the Witch to an end. Tolkien’s equivalent is the triumphant return of the King at the end of The Lord of the Rings.
The origin of the book was in a Lent course at St Andrew’s, Linton Road, in north Oxford, not far from the house where Tolkien wrote most of his best-known books. The congregation made its own input to the course, which was run again a year later at St Michael’s, Blewbury, whose congregation participated in it actively. The three authors have charted a refreshingly distinctive way through Lent, one that will certainly appeal to admirers of Lewis, Tolkien, and other Inklings, and, by introducing others to their works, might well inspire them to read them. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Lord of the Rings would make excellent Eastertide reading.
Canon Hugh Wybrew was formerly Vicar of St Mary Magdalen’s, Oxford.
Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten lands with the Inklings
Julia Golding, Malcolm Guite, and Simon Horobin
Canterbury Press £12.99
(978-1-78622-689-1)
Church Times Bookshop £10.39
