The Eric Metaxas Show - Walter Hooper (Encore)

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

The late Walter Hooper is interviewed by Eric in Oxford, England, for Socrates in the City. Hooper is an author, editor, and trustee of the literary estate of C.S. Lewis.

To the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, it's the Eric Metaxis show. Today we're doing a special edition of the show. We are airing a conversation I had with Walter Hooper. He was the secretary to C.S. Lewis during C.S. Lewis's last year of life, one of the most extraordinary figures I've ever met or had the privilege to interview. So today, you will listen to my first of three conversations with him that were done in Oxford, at St. All Dates Church, just a few years ago, absolutely spectacular for more in Socrates and the City.

Go to Socrates in the City.com. Now, here is that conversation with Walter Hooper. Welcome to Socrates in the City, Oxford Edition. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am, thank you. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this, because for me, this is a dream come true. For years, I have wanted to interview Walter Hooper. And it's taken me this long. I apologize, Walter, but we're finally here in Oxford to do this. Walter Hooper, in case you don't know who he is, was in 1963, the secretary to C.S. Lewis. Spent time living with Lewis, working with him, and soon thereafter, when Lewis died on the same day that, in the same hour, that President Kennedy died, Walter Hooper took on the huge, immeasurable task of doing all that needed

to be done to sort of secure his literary legacy to republish works that had fallen out of print and really to edit his work for decades it's been now. It's just gigantic. It's a lifelong devotion. It seems to me a calling. And for me, it's a tremendous privilege to get this time with Walter Hooper. So please Socrates in the city, welcome for Walter Hooper. We were talking about so many things, and I thought it's been such a joy to talk to you for these long sessions. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am

and how much this is going to mean to so many people to get to hear you. Because you often speak, you probably will tonight or tomorrow, to small groups and you tell these stories. But there's so many who don't get to come to Oxford, who don't get to hear you tell these things. So I said, this is a crime. You have so many fans in America, particularly, but around the world. So thanks for making yourself available for this.

I know it's been a sacrifice. I wanted to ask you yesterday we were talking about how Warnie, Major Lewis, was burning things, many things, significant things. and I know that he'd written you some letters, and I was wondering, did you bring those letters to burn here today? I did, yeah. You did? Yeah, you did.

We'll end things on a bang. We'll burn Warnie's letters. It's an amazing story, and I don't know that I'll ever get over it, to get the details of how it was that he was actually burning things that we now think of as treasures. We spoke yesterday about the dark tower. and all kinds of other things. Were there poems that would have been burned?

I think so, yes. I think he was scooping up a great many things, but some things survived because I had been, C.S. Lewis had sent me to Cambridge. This is before the burning, had sent me to Cambridge to clear up his affairs because he didn't go, he wasn't fit to.

go back. So this was in 63 when you were first in July in August and... In August he sent me over there to deal with his, you know, to sell various books and he said whatever papers you find

appropriate to your own use or else destroy and he wanted anything left in his handwriting if I didn't want it to be torn into small pieces he didn't want people finding manuscripts appears.

Why do you suppose that is? I'm not sure, you know, but I think he had, I think I had mentioned earlier. When I first got to know him, I said, what do you do with your manuscripts? And he said, well, when I write, say, the line of the witch and the wardrobe on one side, then I turn it over, then I write another book on the other side, then I destroy it. So none of those survive. None of those survived.

Anyway, he saw my consternation. And that same morning, Epikills, he picked up a piece of paper, which he'd been scribbling on. And he said, would you like to have that? I said, yes indeed. So he realized that what he said, you know, caused me pain and because there were those of us who liked anything in his hand. And so when he had finished writing, Letters to Malcolm, his last book,

he lent me the copy of that and said, would you like to read it? And so I read it in front of him. In his handwriting. In his handwriting. And then he said, would you like to keep it? and I thought this was a trick question because he said one time he told me

the reason I wouldn't want to leave manuscripts around is that I wouldn't like for the day to come for somebody to say I have a first edition of say Perilandro and somebody else to say ah but I have the unique manuscript I said do you remember that conversation

aren't you afraid I'll do that He said, no. But can't you just answer a straight question? Would you like to have it? And I said, I remember how Boromir coveted the ring at the end of the first volume of the talking. And I remember how it destroyed him. He said, I expect I know that better than you do. But that's not the question.

Why can't you just answer a straight question? Would you like to have it or not? And I said, yes, I would. He said, it takes you a long time, make up your mind, doesn't it? Anyway, then when he sent me to Cambridge, he talked to me, he said, there's a good deal of manuscripts and things over there. But appropriate to your own use, you can have them. But if you don't warn them, then destroy them.

Do you have any sense that, do you think it's possible that this being, in the middle of 1963, that he had a sense of his own impending death and that he was putting his affairs in order? Well, I think so, yes, yes. He knew that. This is why he had written a short note to warn him when he was in the hospital. When he, yes, well, this was in the hospital, thinking about, you know, he may not last very long. And so he suggested to warning, one of the things you might do to try to keep the wolf from the door is to collect my letters, spiritual well, because he was really worried about what man would live on. Why do you think he used that French term, letters spiritual? Because warning was an authority on France. Oh.

And I think he occasionally used things that he would have used, because that would have been a phrase used often if warn his own words. works, I think. Where are most of these handwritten documents, the Lewis documents? I'm assuming that some of them are at the Bodleon here, and that some of them are at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton, Illinois. Well, what the Wade Center has are mainly letters which they've collected, and then they have a number of things given them by warning, such as his diary.

But these papers that were given to me by CSW, they're all in the Birmingham Library. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Metaxus show. There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next.

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Right now, we're talking to Professor Walter. Hooper about all things C.S. Lewis. Let's rejoin the conversation. I know that there are many original letters that Lewis wrote to people scattered all around the world because I've seen some of them. I don't know if you know Tim Keller's, Pastor Tim Keller of New York, New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, whom I know, his wife, Kathy Keller, corresponded with Lewis when she was about 12 years old. And she has these delightful letters from Lewis. in his hand that she carries around and shows people and I'm frightened

every time she does that. Well, I hope you'll get her to send me copies, so they can go in the next collection of letters. Is it possible that they are in the collection? I mean, there's so many letters in there that you don't... I assume that they were, if it's even possible, they're not. I will certainly

bother her. I can look at it this evening. Yeah, yeah, well, that's... But, I mean, just to think of how many letters he wrote to how many people, and that they're all around the world in boxes. And you know, you know, that there are many of them hidden away in drawers or in boxes and addicts. And it's completely unknown that they're there, that the children haven't heard of Lewis or the grandchildren haven't heard of Lewis or maybe even would throw them

away. That's one of the wonderful things in a way to think that who knows what it is that's out there, what we'll discover. We were talking yesterday about Lewis's sense of language. I want to get back to that. But before that, when you first came to here to Oxford, I remember a story

that you went to, maybe it was the Bob Land, I'm guessing, and you asked for anything by Lewis, but the term you used was Lewis, you know, Lewisiana. Yes. Can you, do you remember that

story? I don't think it's exactly as I told it. I may have asked for Luissiana, but I think they, together we worked it out. I worked so long in the Bodleian over 50 years, and I was always working on Lewis, so people who work there call the readers, not by

that name, but by the name of the person they're researching. So I call Mr. C.S. Lewis when I'm there. And I know a man who is Civil War and Robert

E. Lee and Hitler. Mr. Adolf Hitler. You're kidding. Well, actually, one of the things about Hitler's, Erv, is that the people that I worked with, have worked with for years, these are Curtis Brown agents, literary agents, in London and New York. They're Hitler's publishers? Well, they were Hitler's literary agents.

agents. And they have... You're not kidding. No, I'm not. Curtis Brown were Hitler's literary agents. Some have they inherited. They have the rights

to... They control the rights to Mind Kampf. And all the children's stories that he wrote. Well, they... I understand that the royalties on MindCom

have been around for 50 years, and they built up quite a lot. You know, it has been published, it's sold a lot. But they can't find anybody to give the royalties too. Because even the state of Israel turned them down. And all of the people who are related to Hitler pretend that they're not.

But that's ridiculous. They can give them to a Holocaust fund or something. But the Jews don't want that money. Well, I'll take it and give it to them. Hitler's agent. Hitler's Oove, we've not heard that in a long time. Thank you for refreshing us. Well, they're all his speeches too.

In his speech. No, in all seriousness. Handwritten speeches by Adolf Hitler are at the Bodleon. No, no, no. I don't think I have anything. It's just unfathomable. You didn't mean to get off on this topic. No, no, what they have in the Bodleum, they have a very large collection of Lewis's papers.

Many of those papers came from the bonfire. and many came from his rooms in Cambridge. And because of you? That's right, yeah. Well, I just happen to be the right man or the right time. Yes, just a coincidence. Any of us could have done it. Well, but as I heard the story that you went in there,

you marched in there and you asked for Louisiana, and I thought that the woman said, yes, across the Atlantic and make a left. No, no, no. That's the joke that I heard, so I. I don't know. Maybe that's apocryphal. Who cares? Someone actually snorted in the front road. Did you hear that? That's not appropriate.

So, okay, so you had your work cut out for you in the 60s. When did you have a sense that this was going to be a long-term thing and that you might stay here for many years? Was that something that you knew fairly soon? I think I did. after about a year I knew it was for keeps that it was not

I was not really here just as a tourist in the longer I was here on a mission and in one way when I remembered that my own father was already older than CSTS and I remembered my family I became very homesick at times

very very homesick and I made a fool to myself to the first doctor I went to. I think I was just, I was imagining a lot of major eels. I still do a bit, but I went to the doctor because I was so sad and this had made me ill, I thought. And I didn't know that he was such a, what they call a heart prod. A way? Heart proprote.

He went to a church with even more hot prop than this one, St. Ebb's. And anyway, he said, he put me on the spot. He said, would you like to tell me what you think is wrong with you? And I said, I'd be happy to do that. I've got either mononucleosis or M.E. And I said, you'll need to take a blood test for that, and you'll need to send it to the Rackcliffe infirmary. have it analyzed. He said, thank you very much for that information. He said, now, would you like

for me to tell you what I think is wrong with you? I said, why not? Yes. And he said, all right, I will. You are what every English medical student's dreams a meeting in the American hypercontract. There's nothing wrong with you. Now, get out of here. Wow. I felt better than I felt absolutely wonderful. And I went and had steak and chips. Wow. I agree.

But he became used to me after that. And when I ever said, I know I'm a hypochondri. No, correction, you were. You were. I killed you. Oh, God. Well, I hate. I hate doctors like that.

You, okay, but so you, you fell into so many different kinds of things. There's so much to do. I know that in the latter part of the 70s, you were involved in making a documentary that most people, I don't think, have seen involving Peter Eustinov. Tell us about that. How did that come to be? Well, as gradually, as time went on,

and Lewis became fortunately better known, and was being read by a new audience, but I think the American evangelicals stayed absolutely true to Lewis, and they liked the new books coming out about him. They like, because I still felt, and it did work, if I bring out a new book, I force the publishers to bring out two of the old ones that they let go out of print.

But anyway, his works from, brave success with American evangelicals. And it was some of those evangelicals who wanted to make a documentary film Bob O'Donnell in West Chicago. And it was supported by and paid for by somebody else,

you know. Anyway, I was hired to be the presenter and to write the script as well. And they really did work extremely hard. For instance, when we went to Lewis's home in Belfast, the people who owned it allowed us to film inside. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show.

There's more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. The best of the Eric Mataxis show. Welcome back to the Eric Mataxis show from Oxford, England, I'm hosting several Socrates in the city events. Right now, we're talking to Professor Walter Hooper about all things C.S. Lewis. Let's rejoin the conversation. So we filmed inside all the places that we talked about, like the Bodleian Library and Mourden College.

You know, they have the choir singing somehow. So they had spent a lot of money and a lot of time. It was hard for me to both write. something to say and memorize it for the next day. So all I was doing was just memorizing what I had written. But I remember when we came to the end, they wanted to, it really was the beginning, you know, these things off and backwards. They were beginning to film me just on the stage. I was on a place just outside Belfast. And I say, behind me you can see

all these ships and things behind me you could see nothing because it was a cloudy day so they took me out there three four times in one day three four times the next day and I kept saying behind me you can see and behind me they could see nothing

so finally they said we've worked you to death so we're going to send you home but we got your work and we're going to wait for a clear day, and if we ever got a clear day, we'll film it, and we'll say it would be as though you sit behind me, and you do see that.

But it was wonderful to be sent home after that, you know. But I... I wonder if they can put a seascape behind us. I could. If they wanted to. Post-editing suite. Can you do that, some tall ships? Make that happen.

Well, that documentary doesn't seem to me to be well known. I've not seen it. I was looking for it on YouTube. I think that there's a trailer for it, short trailer. But Peter Ustinov, what a great choice. Did he know of Lewis? No, I don't think he did. I didn't meet him.

They hired him for the voice. He doesn't appear in person. Right. Right. Well, I hope that we can find. a copy of that and get it reissued because it's just well it was not just that they did a second film too

with me interviewing the inklings now which inklings were alive at that point well the Tolkien had he had dying but I've been talked to two of his children and one of them is still living

that's right yes here in Oxford. That's right, yeah. And I've talked to Pauline Baines, very, very interesting. Her illustrations have become, it's an interesting thing how that can happen, because I realized when we were talking seven years ago about the giants in the silver chair, I immediately thought of the Pauline Baines illustrations, and they are really so good.

They're apt, which is better than good. they serve the text beautifully and the way she illustrated puddle glum it's a funny thing to think that if she hadn't illustrated puddle glum I'm not sure that I would know what puddle glum looked like well Lewis said this himself he said oftentimes I have no description of various things

she is responsible for having given form to these people like puddle glum That's a big deal. But she herself was very young when she did this. She had already done some work for talking, and that's how Lewis knew about her. Anyway, he hired her to do the first book, The Line of the Witch of the Wardroom.

And she told me something very interesting about this book and what could happen to people. She didn't know anything more. She hadn't talked with Lewis about it anymore, just illustrate the book. And she told me that when she was drawing all those pictures

of Aslan being tormented by the White Witch and others, she had to rip up her paper because she kept weeping on all of that over the fate of Aslan. It just broke her heart. And so finally

she finished the illustrations and then sent them to Jeffrey Blass, the publishers. And she said about a week after that, still bothered by what had happened, Aslam, it suddenly broke on her. Oh, I know who he is. It's Jesus Christ. And so this is the way you get past the watchful dragons that you mentioned yesterday. You don't want a person to be told, this is Jesus Christ, I want you to see that before you begin this book. No, let it happen to you as it did to her. And then, so when she actually takes in what Jesus has done for humanity, then it will break up on her.

This really happened in the real world, and I am one of the beneficiaries of it. Wow, I certainly not heard that. Now, is she still among us? I don't think so. No, she's not. She died a few years ago. She was a simply wonderful friend. She put a lot into these drawings. And Lewis said, really, you know, when he won a prize for the last one, he said, it's really our prize, you know. He was very generous about that.

This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show. There is more of this conference. conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. Of the Eric Mataxis show. This is the Eric Mataxis show. Today you're hearing a special Socrates in the city version of the show drawn from a number of events that I hosted in Oxford, England. Here's more of my conversation with Professor Walter Hooper.

It's our prize, yours as much as mine. And was that for the last battle? The last battle. What did that win? I think the new bingo. I think that been big not right now. The Newberry? The Newberry.

Did it? Did it? I hadn't been aware of that. That's amazing. My goodness. Well, you mentioned, I guess we're going chronologically, in 1984, having had a private audience with Pope John Paul II, and you said that that affected you greatly, and that four years later, as I mentioned earlier, you became a Roman Catholic.

Tell us a little bit about that, if you could. Well, it wasn't really just simply meeting the Pope, but I'm sure that played a part in it. But I had felt for a long time that the church, which Lewis was a member of, in which he supported so well. The Anglican Church. The Anglican Church.

mere Christianity, the core beliefs of it, I think we're passing away from the Anglican Church. And they were, it seemed to me, settled once and for all finally in the Catholic Church. And I particularly wanted a more doctrinal church. I wanted to hear just sin and redemption express more often than the ordination of women and so I became a Catholic and I had no backward glance I'm usually such a sentimental old man

I look back and think oh to be that way again but this didn't happen with me in that case I was so happy I wish I had been young enough to jump up and click my heels together but I couldn't do it for me you've said

at certain points that you believe that Lewis had he lived would have similarly crossed the tiber to use that term for similar reasons that he wouldn't have been able to abide the doctrinal mushyness

of the Anglican Church. Yes, I would say that, and I think he would. I think what he believed about the Christianity is really found totally in the Catholic Church, much more as well, but at least that. See, I think he would have become a Pentecostal, and I'm sure of it, because in 1988 I did. So, no, it's, I'm teasing you,

but it's just interesting to speculate because Lewis is so beloved by Catholics, I mean, obviously by evangelicals, by so many, but it is interesting that he really has found a huge audience among Catholics, Peter Craft, whom I'm sure you know, and I know Lewis's biggest fan, so to speak, and promoter and Tom Howard,

our mutual friend Tom Howard, who says hello. But it is interesting to think of that, that there are so many, and of course Michael Ward, who is with us talking about Lewis. So there's something there, I'm not sure quite what, but there's something there about Lewis and Catholicism, his ability to speak to people who are serious about these doctrines, these old-fashioned things like redemption and sin. Although I would argue, I think, that it's converts to Catholicism, because converts to Catholicism tend to be serious about these things. I think that cradle Catholics tend not to be.

So, except perhaps for Alice von Hildebrandt. Another mutual friend. She says hello as well, but she told me to rebuke you for this relationship you have with this. cat. Can you tell us about that? You do have a cat that plays a central role in things.

I lay in bed all night long peddling my cat. This is my wife really. What is the cat's name? She's named after the saint in Narnia. She's blessed Lucy of Narnia.

And she means the world to me. But she is one of my three cats. The first cat was Urban the 8th, the name of the Pope's. And then when he died, I adopted his mother, Claret the Meek.

Claret's, I mean, cats are not generally meek, but she really was. And I think Clarend the Pope was going to canonize cats, he should begin with her. Anyway, then comes Blessed Lucy of Narnia. And when I went to Narnia a few years ago to receive a relic... You have to explain... Yeah, there is a place called Narnia.

It's an Umbria. It's 50 miles north of Rome. And this is where Siers-Lew has got the name Narnia, was from this classical atlas. and I've been to Narnia a number of times and they know a lot about Lewis Thar They do One of that most popular saints

is Blessed Lucy of Narnia Like Lucy Pevency She was She's one of the saints of the Catholic Church Which is incorrupt Her body is in a glass case It's there But it is still there

But her clothes They said, are not in Grub. And so the Vatican had to come up and change her Dominican habit. And so they gave a fragment of that, a relic of that, to me and my god's son, to bring to Oxford, to put in the Oxford Oratory. Really? That's where it is. But before I put it in, I touched the head of my Blessed Lucy Marnia.

But I've been told the priest, because I thought it might be, wrong. He said, no, that just makes her third-class relic. So there was last night sleeping the same bed with third-class relic. Wow. This is a special Oxford edition

of the Eric Metaxus show. There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. The best of the Eric Metaxus show. Welcome back to the Eric Mataxis show from Oxford, England, where I'm hosting several Socrates in the city events. Right now, we're talking to Professor Walter Hooper about all things C.S. Lewis. Let's rejoin the conversation.

Well, by mentioning how Lewis came up with the name Narnia, You remind me of something we touched upon last time. The importance of names and words and how they're not... Let's see, how can we put this, that there's something more to words than just content. The connotation is as important and sometimes more important than the denotation. Words sounds, summon things other than just facts in our brains. We know that...

Lewis came up with Aslan. Aslan is the Turkish word for lion. Many people don't know that. But it's also, it's not just that. That's a nice idea, but the idea that it's, it sounds right. What does that mean that it sounds right? I mean, if he had named Aslan George or he had named Aslan Bucky, it's just another name. But names have power.

What do you think it is about Aslan or Narnia? Well, Aslan is a beautiful sound. It's short, it's easy to remember, but it doesn't have the familiar sounds of earthly names like George and Bert. You don't want the king of the beasts to be called Bert or Georgie or Billy Bob. Billy Bob, yeah. What kind of a Messiah would that be? It's a beautiful thing. Most of us have never heard of it, but it's easy to remember Aslan.

And it's easy to remember, I think, the other names. Well, this touches on something that our mutual friend, the C.S. Lewis scholar, Tom Howard, has written about in his really extraordinary, I think, classic book, Chance or the Dance, or, as they say it here, Chance or the Dance. But in that book, he talks about something which is really being challenged particularly now, especially in America, but around the world. And what he talks about is God's order and how when you make a statement like, well, Billy Bob wouldn't be right, but Aslan would be right. The assumptions that we bring to that judgment are interesting. Where do we get them from? And it's Tom Howard would say, and I would say, and I would. say that they're baked in, that we have an instinct for what might seem holy, what might seem

noble, what might seem base, vulgar, comedic. And in his book, Tom Howard's book, Chance of the Dance, he talks about the Borzoi as a dog, that when you see it, it looks like nobility. A lion evokes nobility. A hyena or a vulture evoke death, the way they, you know, they they skulk. It's interesting to think that Lewis is on to that idea, that there's something that God has put meaning into all things

and that not everything is malleable. Lewis doesn't write about it so much, or maybe he does, you'll remember where, but it's in all of his fiction. This idea of embodying nobility,

embodying vulgarity and baseness, that these things are not what we say they are. They're innate qualities that God has created a universe with these innate qualities. Of course, the idea of maleness and femalness is being challenged today as though anyone can be anything, as though there isn't even such a thing as maleness. But the way Lewis portrays kings and queens, they're very different in his world. Folks, you've been listening to a special Socrates in the city event from Oxford, England,

and it is my privilege to share these events with you, my radio, I hope you've been enjoying it. This has been a special English version of the Eric Metaxus show.