The Eric Metaxas Show - Could England Fall? | Tolkien, Lewis, and War | Joseph Loconte

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

How did both world wars impact the iconic works of Tolkien and Lewis? Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas is joined by author and historian Joseph Loconte to discuss his newest book, The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945. Throughout this book and conversation, the looming threat of war is revealed, Tolkien and Lewis's friendship as a force for creativity and honesty, and the surprising influence behind Lewis's The Screwtape Letters.

Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla protein powder, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wubb, I wub, I wop, I wap, vanilla. Here comes Eric Mataxas. Hey, the folks.

It's Tuesday, September 30th. Yesterday I was in Washington, D.C. for the Washington, sorry, for the president's commission on religious liberty. I'll be filling you in on all of my travels tomorrow on this program. But today, I want to air a conversation I had with my dear, dear friend, Joe LaCante. He's one of the greats. We had a conversation for Socrates. He's in the studio. Look up, Joe LaCante. His stuff is just spectacular. He's just, he really is a great thinker, absolutely brilliant, and a very dear friend for many years. But we're going to play my conversation with him right now. We did it for Socrates in the studio. And I believe in our two, we're going to rerun my conversation with Pastor Cheon,

who's running for governor in California, kind of a big deal. So that's exciting. All right. And here's my conversation first with Jolacante. Welcome to Socrates in the studio, which is part of Socrates in the city. The city we're in is New York City. Today, my guest, I am really very happy to say, is a very dear friend, Joe LaCante. But if you weren't my friend, I would just tell you about what he's done. So let's pretend for a moment. Let's see. He is the director of the Rivendale Center in New York City. He's a presidential scholar at the New College of Florida. He's the CS Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. And he also serves as senior fellow at the Sagamore

Institute and the Trinity Forum. He's best known for his New York Times bestseller, a Hobbit, a Wardrobe and a Great War, how J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis rediscovered faith, friendship, and heroism in the cataclysm of 1914

through 1918. He's written a book called God, Locke, and Liberty, the struggle for religious freedom in the West. The Searchers, A Quest for faith in the Valley of Doubt and other terrific books that I can recommend. It's my privilege to speak to my friend. Joe LaCante. Joe, welcome. Eric, it is terrific to be with you. A real

pleasure and privilege, my friend. Great to be back. I'm already laughing inside and we haven't, we haven't even started. We haven't started. You really, one of the reasons we've been friends for so long is your love for C.S. Lewis. I have never really been particularly familiar you with Tolkien, but anytime you hang around with people who love Lewis, you're hanging around with people who love Tolkien. So I feel familiar with Tolkien, if only because of his abiding and very important, as we'll see in this conversation, friendship with C.S. Lewis. Your new book is titled The War for Middle Earth. What is the subtitle? I don't have it in front of me. The subtitle is J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis confront the gathering storm.

1933 to 1945. Okay, so your previous book on Lewis talks about the first war in which they fought and suffered. And this one is about them confronting the gathering storm. So you title it the war for Middle Earth. I just want to ask you, when did you in your life first start reading Tolkien or getting excited about Tolkien? You know, I didn't read Tolkien the Lord of the Rings until after the movies. I was actually in my 40s. I'm a late bloomer.

Yeah. Just so you know, right? And my friends usually say, LeConte, you call this blooming? But yes, I'm a late bloomer. And I was doing my John Locke academic work over there in London. And so I'm doing John Locke during the day, and I start reading the Lord of the Rings at night in an English pub. And I thought, that's the best way to get. And I found myself so morally invigorated by the story.

I thought there is something here that I think is. going to be a part of my literary life at some point, didn't know how. Do you speak elvish? I just, I have a few. I'm still working in English here, man. Come on now. I have a few words in elvish that I thought I just want to throw out. Maybe you know what they are.

I just have three. I got to pronounce them correctly. Scungeal, Mama Luke, and Jadrul. And Jadrull. And any, ringing any bells? No. They're not ringing any bells, although there are, certain Italian swear words

we're not going to use here on air, which we all learned growing up, of course. But the Mama Luke is a good one. Before we go too much further, you like Sconjeal. Of course, yes. You know, with a little olive oil? Yeah. Okay. We had to get through that. Yes. All right, so whenever anybody writes a book, obviously

I've written books, the first question I ask because I feel it gets into the conversation is, why did you write the book? I mean, you know a lot about Lewis and Tolkien. What made you say this is a I have to write. Yeah, and I never thought I'd write a second book.

The first book was on the impact of the First World War on their lives and the literary lives. I didn't think I'd write a second book because there's so many good biographies out there. But then as I got more into the subject matter and understood more about, okay, what is going on in 1930s and 40s as they are writing their great imaginative works. What the historian likes to do is to contextualize. Look at their great works and figure out what's going on politically and culturally as they're in this storm, the gathering storm, as Winston Churchill called it. And it really begins in earnest in

1933 when Hitler comes to power. And so I thought, I haven't read, of all the wonderful biographies that are out there of Tolkien Lewis, I have not read a single biography, and maybe not even a serious scholarly article that tries to examine their works in the context of the crucible of the Second World War. But I don't think you can appreciate their achievement unless you understand what they were going through. Well, it's funny because there is, there is, there is, real darkness in some of what Lewis, with whom I'm much more familiar, writes. He clearly has suffered. He knows pain. He lost his mother when he was very young. What he went through in the first war, the horror of the trenches, that's always there with him, isn't it? Yes, but it also is

with Tolkien because he was an orphan by the time he's a young teenager. Mom and dad both pass. and he's at the Battle of the Soam in the First World War, the single bloodiest day in British military history, July 1st, 1916. Tolkien is at the Battle of the Soam. He lost most of his closest friends in war, just as Lewis did. So they carried the scars of war. And I think it's one of the things that actually drew them together in friendship. Other things, of course, their love of epic literature, mythology, right, heroic stories.

That draws them together in 1920s. They first meet in 1926. and pretty soon, pretty quickly, this deep friendship is going to emerge. But part of the point I'm making in the book is, I think the Second World War creates this sense of deep urgency that they've got to get on with their callings. Their academic callings and their callings as writers of fantasy fiction because they just don't know if they're going to survive, right?

From 1939, as you know, until about 1945, the survival of Great Britain is an open question. It's an open question. You know, now, it's interesting, and this is because I'm an amateur historian, which still makes me an historian. But at least in... I'm not going to contest that, yeah. I would offend too many of your fans. And I've got five honorary doctorates, which does not make me a doctor of anything.

But I only say that because the idea, when you're dealing with history, we know that Hitler's defeated. We know that Churchill and England survived. We know this, and it's very tough for us to entertain the idea that it might not have gone that way or just to put ourselves in the context, as you say, of not knowing how it's going to turn out. That's hard. But it's vital, as you say, to understand these two men and what they're going through. and of course not just the two of them. But let's talk about that for a minute, Joe,

because that's a big thing that when we think of England, it does seem inconceivable to us that it might not have survived. It really does seem almost impossible to comprehend that possibility. But for them, living in real time and not knowing the outcome, there's a series of letters that Lewis wrote

a couple of his friends, Don Griffiths, was one of them, where it's in 1938, and it's in October of 1938. And he says, pray for me because I was terrified to discover how terrified I was by the crisis. Now, you know, what's the crisis in September, October of 1938? It's the Munich crisis. They're living through the Munich crisis. and the sense that Britain is on the edge of another world war, there's a sense of dread and gloom in the air. And Lewis is terrified by the prospect of another war.

He says he'd rather die than go through another war, but here he is. This is the other thing, too, about history and the way we perceive time. I mean, you and I are pretty much contemporaries, and so for us, World War II is ancient history. World War I is a thousand years before World War II. Right. To them, it was 10 minutes ago. Right. That is tough to fathom that the distance between 1918 and 1938 is less than nothing.

Yes. I mean, as we sit here, that's 2005. Exactly. Exactly. So it was just a moment ago that they had crawled out of that abyss. Yes. And here they are. Yes. Their lives are bracketed by two global conflicts, the most distrable.

conflicts, the most destructive wars in the history of humanity. Their lives are bracketed by those wars, and we cannot appreciate their literary achievements unless we understand that basic fact about their lives, right? But I don't see many authors or others really understanding that and pressing that and helping us to understand it, and what an achievement it was for them to accomplish what they did in their writings in that absolute cataclysmic period from 1939 to 1945. Think about it, Eric. The blitz on London, 76 consecutive nights of aerial bombing on the city of London, save one night. 76 consecutive nights. They're in Oxford. And so friends, family members, the evacuation of children by the thousands into Oxford. How does Lewis get the idea for the line, the witch in the wardrobe, the evacuation of children from London because of the war to the home of a professor?

That's when he first starts writing those lines during the Second World War, the opening lines. along. So they are in the midst of the struggle. And I think for Americans, you know, we're on the other side of the Atlantic, right? We don't get involved until Pearl Harbor. And there are some British historians who think we may not even have gotten involved had we not been attacked by Japan. We were so isolationist.

I'm pretty sure that's a fact. Wow. You do. At least I would, if I had to guess, yes, I would say that. Well, just for me and for those listening and watching, give us the chronology. In other words, when did Lewis,

or what was Lewis writing during this period? And what about Tolkien? When did Tolkien start the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings? When did that process begin? Yeah, let's take the second one first. Yeah. Tolkien writes the Hobbit in around 1933. He's got the draft of the Hobbit out. It doesn't get published until 1937.

And of course, you know this because you've written some successful books. Your publisher is always demanding more. Or give me a sequel. His publisher wants a sequel to The Hobbit. And he initially says, I have nothing more to say about it. about hobbits. He literally tells him that. Nothing more to say about hobbits. But he starts writing it again when, at the end of 1937. So for the end of 1937, right through the Second World War, he is struggling with that manuscript. And we can talk more about how the war, I think,

affected his imagination throughout. Well, Lewis, think about the screw tape letters, for example. This is a diabolical fantasy, right? Screw tape, the demon and a junior demon, how do we tempt and drag a human being, a human soul into the pit of hell, right? How does it get the idea for the screw tape letters? I think you know this. It's 1940 in the fall, and Hitler now controls virtually all of Central and Western Europe. France has fallen, no sign of America entering the war. Hitler has just given a speech, I think, on a Friday.

He's triumphant. The German people will follow him anywhere. And the speech, Lewis is listening to it. It's being broadcast by the BBC and simultaneously translating to English. He's with his friend, Dr. Haver, the family physician. They're listening to the speech on a Friday. Hitler's speech. It's all about, of course, conquest and his rage, his hatreds.

Lewis says, actually in a letter to his brother, Warnie, he says, while the speech lasts, it's almost impossible not to waver just a little. Wow. Think about that. The power of the charisma of that individual. But then he says, in church on Sunday, he gets the idea for the screw tape letters. Not an accident, in my mind. Not an accident.

A diabolical fantasy. But he's going to focus on not a global conflict, but the spiritual conflict going on for the soul of every human being. Now, that's a deeply committed Christian author. Remarkable man. But it's the speech. It's the speech. It's Hitler's speech. I absolutely never heard.

heard that. That's extraordinary. And so when does, well, let's go back actually. You mentioned the friendship. I'm sure we've covered this at some point in one of our previous conversations. But, you know, in 1926, Tolkien is a Catholic Christian. Yes. C.S. Lewis is an atheist. He's an atheist. Talk about that a little bit. Their friendship. they both obviously have the war in common. How did they become friends or what began to draw them together before Lewis comes to faith? It's a great question. One little thing that the Tolkien did, you know, he's a linguist, he's a philologist.

He loves languages, all kinds of different languages. Icelandic was one of the languages that he knew and loved because of these epic sagas that were written in the original Icelandic. So he starts a little Icelandic group, a reading group. group that only Toad would do, and he asked Lewis to join him. And I think that was the beginning of the friendship. Because Lewis also was stirred by the same kind of sagas. And you get the sense that they're having this, something has happened here in the friendship.

One of the turning points, though, is when Tolkien sends to Lewis his early manuscript of the story of Baron and Lutheran, you know, the human and the princess, The, the, the, go, go. Wait, who sends this story? Tolkien sends it to Lewis. Yes, I was going to say, okay. It's an early, is I said, Tolkien sends to us.

No, no, no, I wasn't clear, so, yeah. So the, the, the elvish princess who lives eternally and the love relationship with the mortal man, he sends it to Lewis for his, for his feedback. Lewis sends him like 12 pages of critique. And in the letter that he sends a Tolkien, he says, more quibbles to follow. You know, 12 pages. of critique, but he loves it. He loves the story. And he's helping

to see how it could be better. Tolkien incorporates some of Lewis's suggested edits. But think about what would happen if, you'd sent me an early part of your manuscript. He said, I've got time for that, Eric, I'm time to read your manuscript of critique it. You'd interpret that in a certain way, right? He responds with this thoughtful

critique, and you can tell that is a turning point. Because what's Tolkien doing? He said that story was closest to his own life, his relationship with his own wife. It's kind of modeled on that. So it's a precious story to him, one of his most favorite stories of all the legendarium. He's

sharing it with his friend Lewis. It's a turning boy in the relationship. He realized there's a kindred spirit. Well, now when you say it's one of the... He invented the story. Yes, Tolkien did, of course. Right. Okay, I mean, first of all, I want to comment on the idea think of a world in which people are writing stories.

Yes. We don't live in a world where people are writing stories. I mean, it's an interesting thing to me that there exists at a market or a world in which one could write a story like that. Presumably, there's an audience for that. He's reinventing fantasy for the modern mind is what he's doing. He's writing really the first modern fantasy story,

and he's showing future of writers how you do it. And one of the ways you do it is you build it upon a whole history, a deep, rich, ancient history, so it has depth, has realism. We're so familiar with that. that we're over familiar with it, to the point where I realized that I never particularly liked reading fantasy. And I think because most of it is not that good

because it's sort of trying to do what Tolkien did but without his amazing talent. Yes, yes. So he kind of invented the genre. He really didn't invent the genre. I don't know that I've invented any genres. Have you ever invented a genre? Not lately.

I mean, it's an amazing thing that where does that come from? Well, we have to say this, and I think your audience will appreciate this, without their education, with their classical Christian education, think about it. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton,

this is part of their intellectual furniture. Yeah, there you are. And you don't write fantasy with depth without that as part of your moral literary outlook. That's part of the reason I think we don't produce... Actually, no, that's interesting. So to some extent, I mean, they're standing on the shoulders of, you know, Dante and Milton and Homer and whoever wrote Beowulf.

We'll never know. I think he wrote Beowulf. Unless, I think it was Mark Felt. He was the head of the FBI in the late 60s. I believe. A little side hustle. I believe his name was Mark Felt. Yeah.

I'll look that up on Wikipedia. So, no, but it's just so interesting. interesting because when we think of those literary epics, that really is... Yeah. I mean, you know, we say he invented a genre, but he really was coming out of that. And think about this, back to the friendship, and it ties in the genre business as well. Beilf was probably the most important work, literary work in Tolkien's life. He translated it.

Oh, I didn't know that. He taught on it for decades. It was a huge part of his academic and literary life. It's a story of this hero who's up against Grendel and Lamar. I mean, it's one monster after another. Raw evil, radical evil is what Baywolf is up against. Tolkien is drawn to stories of that lone heroic quest, putting aside your own ambition,

following your moral duty to save others against the radical evil. Lewis is drawn to the same thing. You reference, well, the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, screw tape letters, the abolition of man, Lewis's Space Trilogy, the Narnia Chronicles. It really is interesting because there is something, particularly in the space trilogy, Yeah. Horrific.

Almost no writers in the 20th century do, the way they do. Yeah, maybe Orwell. Maybe George Orwell, perhaps. Yeah. Perhaps. Again, think about the political, cultural context. Lewis is writing the space trilogy. Yeah.

It begins writing it 1938, 1939, 1940. You know what is happening. the rise of the totalitarian states, communism, and they are ravaging the European continent, right? So what do we get, if I could read a few lines, talking about radical evil from Perilandra now, right, the second in the series. And the description of the unmanned is really, it's horrifying.

Paralander is, you know, if somebody put a gun to my head at 2 a.m. and said, what's your favorite book, I might have to spit out Paralandra. I mean, that book is, I don't know anything that really can compare to it in the 20th century. but go ahead. The temptation of the Eve character by this demonic character of the man.

There's nothing like it in my literature. You feel like you're in the Garden of Eden listening to the temptation, don't you? Here's a few lines. The description that Lewis gives of the unman. Tell me what comes to mind, Eric. It did not defy goodness. It ignored it to the point of annihilation.

Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was whole-hearted. You know, pops right into my head, Michael DeCoccas. Oh, my God. Well, in the tank, oh, my God. With the helmet from the tent. I'm in the campaign.

You're in the campaign, right? It is funny, though, because when you think about it, we really don't, that is one of the reasons that that book convinced me of the unprecedented genius of C.S. Lewis. To create that picture of evil that you just read, it is. It is chilling. It's chilling, but it's not just out of his imagination, right? It's at his doorstep. It's at the doorstep of England in 1940, 41. They're expecting an invasion by the Nazis any day, and they're trying to prepare for it, right?

So there's a form of radical evil on the political stage, and this is how we, again, help to appreciate their literary achievement. Well, he's still, I mean, what's fascinating to me is the prophetic quality of Lewis that in the abolition of man, and in the last book in the so-called in the Ransom Trilogy, he's talking about things, it seems very contemporary. Like he sees where it's all going.

Yes, yes. Before, I think anyone does. Yeah, I think that's right, the hideous strength. I mean, and the way that science and technology will be abused, used and abused in the service of what? The will to power. Well, welcome to our age, friend,

the 21st century, science and technology to dehumanize us, holding out the promise of the good life, of the perfect life, here we are, right? Yeah, unfortunately, I'm tracking. It's... He was prophetic. So what are some of the things, some of the other things that you talk about in the course of this new book? Well, with these men, I think we've got to try to appreciate the degree to which they felt,

like they had to push back against these ideologies through their writing. And I don't think that's been fully appreciated. And I've only taken a stab at it. Meaning, they're not going to just throw up their hands and say, well, totalitarianism. There it is. Modernism as a literary movement. You know, the wasteland. I guess we just have to put up with it.

Famous conversation around 1936 between the two of them. Lewis is a Christian by then. Their friendship is deepening. Lewis says to Tolkien, well-tallers, his nickname for Tolkien, Well-tallers, if they're not going to write the kinds of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves. They're going to get in the game, right? And they're going to deliberately push back

against these dehumanizing tendencies, both in literature, in modern art, but also the political ideologies. And they're going to re-enchance the moral imagination as different authors have noted, right? Well, the reason I see them as just giants, you know, in the 20th century

is because, I mean, you mentioned Orwell, other than Orwell, I see the 20th century as an abdication of this call to arms that most people in the 20th century, as you said, they just either described

the decay and the horror or just wrote it like a wave without what they did was unique. They created what you could call a beachhead of resists. at Oxford with the inklings, the other Christian authors that they pulled together in their ranks, Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, and others, Tolkien Lewis at the center of this thing. It is a deliberate

haven, beachhead of resistance. And they have no idea where their writings and their scribblings are going to go. They just know they have to try to do something. And here we are talking about their works, you know, 75 years later, right? Well, it seems inevitable that unless you, you have a deeply biblical worldview, you wouldn't know what to make of the evil. You wouldn't even be able to call the evil evil, really. You could just know maybe you don't like it. But they seem to see to the bottom of it and to see that there is an answer to it. Yes.

And I think if I could quote from a little place here from Lewis, I think I can find it pretty quickly. It's from his radio broadcast action. Remember he's giving the BBC radio. radio broadcasts. He's asked by the religious director of the BBC. Britain's at war.

People need to be encouraged. This is how different the BBC was back then. We need someone who has the ability to communicate the Christian faith to our nation in ways that can be understood, right? You remember how he starts out, the first line in mere Christianity, the radio broadcast, 745 in the evening, 1941,

the first line, which is the first line in mere Christianity. The first line in the radio broadcast, Eric, is everyone has heard people quarreling. Everyone has heard people quarreling. An amazing place to begin. He's trying to reach this mass audience. He's beginning with the moral law.

We have a sense of how life ought to be, how you ought to behave. You're violating the norms. We violate our own norms. He starts out with the moral law and he winds up sharing about Jesus and the great gift of salvation. He doesn't start with Jesus.

He starts with everyone has heard people quarreling. What a good thing. gift, the apologist gift that he has. One of the other things, I guess, that I always think of when I think of Lewis's, particularly the Narnia Chronicles and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, is how they have lasted compared to all the other books that have been endlessly hailed as great. I mean, is there a soul on planet Earth? reading

Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses, who's not an academic. These books that they wrote, if the world should last a thousand years, I'm assuming, kind of like Beowulf, we will be reading these books. So the question then is why?

How are I? And I only have a partial... It's a fabulous question. I only have a partial answer to that. The enduring power and attraction of their works. How do we explain it? And I think it's a combination of things. I think it's a combination of, what I said earlier, there is this great intellectual literary foundation,

the classical Christian tradition that is part of it. They're drawing on these great works, these universal themes. That's why we consider them great works. Human nature doesn't change. Heroism, cowardice, right? Sacrifice for a noble cause. Those themes are embedded in some of our great... So that's part of their background.

But also they've lived through so much. They're writing now. is it's being shaped through the crucible, especially now of the Second World War. World War also plays a role. And I think during the Second World War, both wars are in play in their minds. How could they not be? Because there's only 20 years earlier. And they had painful memories of the First World War. I think the memories of heroism and the horror of the First World War and the lived Second World War is playing on their imagination. That's part of it. But of course, we have to say, because it's absolutely true, the Christian foundation, that these men had to imbue their mythic works

with this profound understanding of the human condition our nobility and our tragedy. There aren't many writers who can do that. Well, I mean, first of all, they have just the outrageous talent. It's just an outrageous gift from God. You can't make yourself more talented by hard work. It doesn't work that way. They have this outrageous talent,

but their Christian worldview, it's not just, the Christian worldview, it's a particularly heroic, I would say it's an authentic Christian worldview. It's not just the theological worldview. Because what they were doing in writing these books, you know, was standing against the juggernaut of cynicism. When I think of the 20th century in modernism, they stood against it. They said, no, there is hope. Yes. There is truth, there is goodness. Because, again, it just seems to me that what makes them stand out so much is that I can hardly think of anyone else who stood against that, you know,

juggernaut of cynicism, as I put it. They really were vilified by the intellectual elites for doing that. Yes. Because the cynicism, as you rightly point out, it was almost pathological. almost pathological in 1920s and 30s, the idea that people could take charge of their destiny in some way, that they could fight the great forces around us, the forces of evil, that the individual really mattered.

All of that had become undone in the trenches of the mechanized slaughter of the First World War. And so they refuse to give in to that cynicism, and they are so deliberate in their writings. What did they do? They take this idea of the epic quest, the epic hero and they reinvent them for the modern mind like no one else was even trying to do.

And they executed that through their writings in ways that was just so powerful and resonant. And also, Eric, how they were describing in their stories, the fight, the struggle against evil and the darkness, it seemed to be confirmed by the life experience in the Second World War. I don't think it's part of the reason that works have such a resonance. It speaks to the modern condition.

So their heroes are not two-dimensional heroes. I mean, think about Frodo and Sam, the struggle as they're on the way to Mordor. I mean, at the end, without a spoiler alert for your audience, I mean, Frodo, in a sense, fails in his quest. He succeeds, but he fails. The ring is mine and puts it back on his finger. Yeah. Right? And then it's Gallum, who bites the ring, falls into the cracks of doom.

So, as Tolkien described that, a sudden, miraculous grace. is what rescues all the Middle Earth, a sudden miraculous grace. Boy, that really... That's Tolkien. Tolkien's a word. It's not mine. Yeah. No, but I mean, it's also...

I mean, I think the reason his work has such appeal is that you know it's right. Yes. In other words, you know it has to be grace. Yes. Hard as we might try. In the end, we definitely will fail, yes.

Apart from grace. Yes. And so when you read that, you go, yes. There's no triumphalism here. It's the lowly, frightened, indecisive hobbit who'd rather be in the comfort of his hobbit hole and rather not leave it. And boy, does that relate to you or me?

I don't know about your hobbit hole. I kind of like mine. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Well, it really is interesting because it does, maybe you can answer the question. But the question to me is, why did the two of them stand as they did?

when nearly everyone else did not, could not, was not willing to. I mean, again, you think of the intellectual tradition, you can go all the way back to Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, this cynicism about faith that was there, you know, already with the Victorians, and it carries on, obviously, into the 20th century. And it's corrosive, it's pernicious. And so to get to World War II and to somehow, despite all of that, be able to stand the way they did, not triumphantly, as you said, nonetheless, heroically.

Yes. What do you think it was about these two men? Or do you think that their friendship was part of that? Because it is so hard to stand alone. Yes, I think that's exactly part of that. the answer. I don't think either those men could have accomplished what they did in the literary works without the help and encouragement

of each other. And Tolkien is very explicit about this. He says, in several of his letters, for a time, C.S. Lewis was his only audience for the Lord of the Rings. And he read out virtually every chapter to C.S. Lewis and to the inklings of the Lord of the Rings in composition.

And Lewis is always saying, give me more, Towers, give me more. You can do better. Right? How amazing. I mean, We just have to say how amazing to have a friend that would encourage you and that the whole world has benefited as a result of the encouragement of C.S. Lewis to his friend. That's a big deal. That's right.

He says explicitly, I never would have brought it to a completion without the encouragement of C.S. Lewis. He never would have finished the work without him. And I think that's probably true. I think there's an inequality here. It's a quote from C.S. Lewis after Tolkien finishes writing the Lord of the Rings, the manuscript. Lewis has the manuscript. And he says, I've drunk the rich cup to the bottom. And he says, I'm going to try to quote it from memory.

He says, now, so much of your whole life, Tolkien, writing to Tolkien now, talking about the Lord of the Rings, so much of your whole life, so much of our joint life, so much of the war is now, in a way, made permanent. I mean, do we even grasp what he's saying? I think he's saying somehow hidden in the pages of the Lord of the Rings is something of their shared journey together because they lived through this absolute cataclysm of the Second World War and they lived it together in friendship, in fellowship. And Lewis is saying explicitly,

that work reflects our shared toil, our shared loves, our shared sacrifice, our friendship. It's hidden in the pages of Lord of the Rings. Wow. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Okay, so the title of the book is The War for Middle Earth. Remind us again of the subtitle.

We say a lot in the subtitle. Yes, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis confront the Gathering Storm 1933 to 1945. I remember when you were announcing me in the first book, I did a talk in the first book. The subtitle was so long. I think you used the phrase interminably long. But I'm not bitter about it. I really have gotten over it. I just want you to know. I that's the funny thing about subtitles right you got the colon you got that colon you got the colon and you can just go and nobody's going to stop you yeah where do you go with this in the book I haven't read the book yet it's not out as we're having this conversation where do you

take this I'm starting pre-1933 I want to give a little kind of recap of you know the post-World war one trauma disillusionment the shell-shot veteran is really a walking metaphor for the European mind in the 1920s, right? The anti-heroism, which is almost pathological. So I want to give some of that cultural background, but also political background. Hitler in 1925, the first installment of Mind Kampf is published in 1925. This is the year that Tolkien and Lewis are actually back at Oxford for the first time, that first year.

They're coming back as instructors. It's that year that MindConf appears. So things are beginning to happen in the 20s. I'm going to give some of that background, some of their friendship. But then 1933 on, Israel, I spend the bulk of the book. And I'm almost taking it month to month at some point. So I'll give you an example, if I could. 1942, for example, in the spring.

Yes, America is in the war, Pearl Harbor, but Eric, we're not prepared for the Second World War, and we're getting our butts kicked by the Japanese in the Pacific, as the Brits are as well. And it's one failure, one surrender after. One disaster after another. All of Europe is in Nazi hands. The Soviets are doing their thing,

and now the Japanese are running amok in the Pacific. And it looks like in the first part of 1942, like civilization is on the edge of a knife. If we could quote from Lady Galadriel, your quest stands on upon the edge of a knife, stray but a little, and it will fail to the ruin of all. That's 1942 in the spring. And in that moment, and this is what I try to do in the book,

is contextualize. In that moment, Tolkien is stuck He can't write anymore, the Lord of the Rings. And he's fallen into kind of a gloom. And he wakes up one morning, he says, and out comes a short story called Leaf by Niggle. It's considered the most autobiographical.

It's about a painter named Niggle, who was painting this great canvas, this great tree, and he can't finish it. And he just came out fully formed. And biographers would say, this really looks like a self-medication. You know, he's treating him. himself emotionally

by writing the story he's feeling mortality he's feeling the shortness of the tether if I could borrow from C.S. Lewis. The curtains coming down. I think he's just turned 50. Yeah, he's turned 50 in 1942.

So he's feeling mortality. He doesn't think he's going to finish the Lord of the Rings. And he writes leaf by miggle and it's incredibly beautiful.