"Who gets to define Narnia?"

Some reports indicate that Netflix's termination of a lot of employees has been at least partly due to reactions to their version of The Magician's Nephew. The reported feelings from those who have had a chance to see the film, as well as those who viewed the first trailer, have been largely negative. These excerpts from a blog post titled "The Last Battle for Narnia" argue that there was a basic flaw in the director's vision for the movie:

.... When it comes to such a classic work of fiction, there should never be a two-way swinging door. The door of creativity should swing outward from the book towards the film itself. Never the opposite. For the original work is the source — the adaptation is derivative.

An author creates the world, while the filmmaker is merely invited to enter it. ....

What Gerwig is striving for, and can’t seem to grasp, is what Lewis penned so well in crafting the character of Narnia — an elusive sense of holiness. Aslan can’t be nailed down. He can’t be caged. He can’t be fully explained, nor is he in the books. And that mystery is part of his majesty.

But what has puzzled so many Narnian readers is the rather obvious comparison her reimagining of Aslan invites. In The Last Battle, Lewis’s final Chronicle, Shift the Ape discovers a lion skin and persuades Puzzle the Donkey to wear it. He then presents this counterfeit Aslan to the Narnians, insisting that they accept his manufactured version of the Lion as the real thing. Those who question the substitution are manipulated into silence. The irony is beyond perfect, because here we are, seventy years later, debating what Aslan is supposed to look and sound like. One would think that anyone attempting to reinvent the Lion might have anticipated the comparison.

The backlash started with the decision to cast Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan. The objection isn’t to Streep herself who is, beyond dispute, a legendary actress. Rather, the controversy arises from the identity of the character she’s been asked to portray. Aslan is not simply a talking lion whose voice can be reinvented without consequence. To Lewis, Aslan is unmistakably male. For readers who understand that Christological connection, it raises questions about whether the filmmakers understand the theological significance of the character they’ve inherited. Whatever Gerwig’s intentions, the casting risks appearing less like a faithful interpretation of Lewis and more like an attempt to reshape his creation according to contemporary sensibilities. It’s a case where the ideological tail appears to be wagging the lion. ....

Who gets to define Narnia? The author who created it, or the generation that controls the camera? If the author owns the pen, and a director owns the camera, then in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, my money is on the pen being mightier than the camera.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that Lewis already wrote a story about what happens when someone manufactures a new Aslan and insists that everyone else accept the substitution. He called it The Last Battle. .... (more)

The illustration is a modified version of one created for the source.

The Punk Monk Abbey is a recently created Substack and I've decided to follow it. The excerpts above are from a much longer entry very much worth the time of anyone interested in the subject.

Peyton Jones, "The Last Battle for Narnia," The Punk Monk Abbey, Oct. 19, 2026.

Not of this world

C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy wrote about "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."  Parts of what Roger Scruton wrote in "Beauty and Desecration," reminded me of that:

...[S]uppose you are walking home in the rain, your thoughts occupied with your work. The streets and the houses pass by unnoticed; the people, too, pass you by; nothing invades your thinking save your interests and anxieties. Then suddenly the sun emerges from the clouds, and a ray of sunlight alights on an old stone wall beside the road and trembles there. You glance up at the sky where the clouds are parting, and a bird bursts into song in a garden behind the wall. Your heart fills with joy, and your selfish thoughts are scattered. The world stands before you, and you are content simply to look at it and let it be.

Maybe such experiences are rarer now than they were in the eighteenth century, when the poets and philosophers lighted upon them as a new avenue to religion. The haste and disorder of modern life, the alienating forms of modern architecture, the noise and spoliation of modern industry—these things have made the pure encounter with beauty a rarer, more fragile, and more unpredictable thing for us. Still, we all know what it is to find ourselves suddenly transported, by the things we see, from the ordinary world of our appetites to the illuminated sphere of contemplation. It happens often during childhood, though it is seldom interpreted then. It happens during adolescence, when it lends itself to our erotic longings. And it happens in a subdued way in adult life, secretly shaping our life projects, holding out to us an image of harmony that we pursue through holidays, through home-building, and through our private dreams.

Here is another example: it is a special occasion, when the family unites for a ceremonial dinner. You set the table with a clean embroidered cloth, arranging plates, glasses, bread in a basket, and some carafes of water and wine. You do this lovingly, delighting in the appearance, striving for an effect of cleanliness, simplicity, symmetry, and warmth. The table has become a symbol of homecoming, of the extended arms of the universal mother, inviting her children in. And all this abundance of meaning and good cheer is somehow contained in the appearance of the table. ....

Christians have inherited from Saint Augustine and from Plato the vision of this transient world as an icon of another and changeless order. They understand the sacred as a revelation in the here and now of the eternal sense of our being. .... For the most part, transitory purposes organize our lives: the day-to-day concerns of economic reasoning, the small-scale pursuit of power and comfort, the need for leisure and pleasure. Little of this is memorable or moving to us. Every now and then, however, we are jolted out of our complacency and feel ourselves to be in the presence of something vastly more significant than our present interests and desires. We sense the reality of something precious and mysterious, which reaches out to us with a claim that is, in some way, not of this world. .... (more)

Roger Scruton, "Beauty and Desecration," City Journal, Spring 2009.

Skaggs family heritage

Last week I spent a few days with my brother. When that happens we usually spend hours sorting through at least one of the bins of letters, photographs, cards, news clippings, etc., that we stored after clearing out our parents' house when they moved into assisted living. One of the things we came across, and decided to keep, was a 1984 letter from the granddaughter of Dad's older brother, Uncle Alison Skaggs. Her references to the D.A.R. are, of course, to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Dear Aunt Mary & Uncle Leland —

I'm sending along to you copies of information I've found on a recent trip to Washington D.C. I spent one morning within the library at the National H.Q. of D.A.R. (the are quite a stuffy bunch). I found proof of our James C. Skaggs as serving in the American Revolution! The copy of this proof is enclosed. At some point in time I'll look up those records of him in Tennessee. Apparently a woman in CA has registered under James C., in the D.A.R. chapter of her local. I was informed that to join this club, you are to write your local chapter and "humbly" inform them that you are eligible with proof. Consequently they write back and invite you to join. Enclosed are copies of the forms used by "Teresa Skaggs Gonsa", to give you an example. I made these copies from records on micro-film at the library also. What fun it was to find all this! Hope you enjoy having these.

Spent Labor Day at Gull Lake. Mom & I & Susie took "Kuby" to Bill Knapps for lunch. She's pretty good, and quite healthy these days. The best to you & yours,

                                     Colleen

The envelope included all the print-outs of the micro-filmed documents she had obtained. And they do, indeed, show that James C. Skaggs, who was born in South Carolina in 1763 and died in Tennessee in 1838 served on the "Patriot" side in a "Company of Cavalrymen," as a Lieutenant.

He enlisted during 1780 under Captain John Roebuck and Col. Roebuck. Later, he joined Gen. Morgan and was in the battle at Cowpens. He was also in the battle at Guilford Courthouse. In addition, he was under Gen. Sumpter and was at the fall of Orangeburg. He was under Col. Pickens and was at the siege of Ninety Six, the battle at Kettle Creek and one at Waxhaw. (Move to Tenn.)

All very interesting. James C. Skaggs is a direct ancestor. I taught high school US History for decades and enjoy finding a family connection to significant events. I also enjoy knowing about family genealogy. I'm not inclined to do original research, although it is much easier today than in 1984, but I am happy to profit from the work of others. I do not plan to apply to be a "Son of the American Revolution," if such an organization exists.

"Firm in the day of distress [and] gay in the hour of jollity"

Samuel Johnson on genuine friendship:

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both. We are often, by superficial accomplishments and accidental endearments, induced to love those whom we cannot esteem; we are sometimes, by great abilities, and incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom we cannot love. But friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the other; and therefore requires not only that its candidates should gain the judgment, but that they should attract the affections; that they should not only be firm in the day of distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only useful in exigencies, but pleasing in familiar life; their presence should give cheerfulness as well as courage, and dispel alike the gloom of fear and of melancholy.

To this mutual complacency is generally requisite an uniformity of opinions, at least of those active and conspicuous principles which discriminate parties in government, and sects in religion, and which every day operate more or less on the common business of life. For though great tenderness has, perhaps, been sometimes known to continue between men eminent in contrary factions; yet such friends are to be shewn rather as prodigies than examples, and it is no more proper to regulate our conduct by such instances, than to leap a precipice, because some have fallen from it and escaped with life.

Samuel Johnson, "The requisites to true friendship," The Rambler, Oct. 1750.

C.S. Lewis in World War II

CS Lewis at the RAF Chaplains’ School in Oxford in 1944 

Bruce R Johnson in The Telegraph explains "Why the Second World War was the making of CS Lewis" (excerpts):

Lewis understood [speaking to airmen] could give him repeated opportunities both to advance the Christian point of view and “bring encouragement to some lonely chaplain who had been finding the going hard”. But this opportunity was very different from his weekly routine of teaching English literature at Oxford. ....

Lewis spent the next four years travelling to RAF establishments throughout Britain. It was exhausting work, with months where Lewis was hardly home three consecutive nights. Yet he began to make a difference. The words of his 1943 Palm Sunday address at RAF Feltwell became the chapter “Making and Begetting” in Mere Christianity. The squadrons there were flying massive night bombing campaigns and experiencing staggering losses. Chaplain Stuart Barton Babbage said it was “into hell and back again”. Lewis used the experiences of these aircrews in his talk. He compared historic Christian doctrines to lines on the maps they used each night to guide them safely home. Religious experiences are far more exciting than dry doctrine, as walks along a beach are more pleasant than reading maps. But Lewis pointed out, “the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America”.

That same evening, Lewis addressed smaller groups in the station chapel. To men facing death, Lewis was unusually frank about his own struggles (just as combat veterans can sometimes open up to one another). Lewis then transitioned to a description of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Padre Babbage remembered: “We were, once again, made aware of his extraordinary feeling for words, of his rare ability to use exactly the right word in the right place, and of the endless fertility of his imagination.” ....

While Lewis continued with these RAF addresses, he was also hosting evacuee children in his home near Oxford, the Kilns. They had been sent there by parents worried about German bombing. Different groups of evacuees (all teenage girls) continued to be rotated in and out of the Kilns throughout the war. Around the time that the first group arrived, Lewis decided to write a story about a picture he had carried in his head since his own teenage years. It was of a faun with an umbrella carrying packages through a snowy wood. The first paragraph of that story introduced four children sent away from the air raids of London to the countryside home of an old professor. Lewis did not know where the story could go from there, until he began having dreams about lions. Soon the Great Lion Aslan pulled the whole story together. It is significant that the fantasy which became The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was framed by the real-life battles between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. .... (more, probably behind a paywall)

Bruce R Johnson, "Why the Second World War was the making of CS Lewis," The Telegraph, Oct 11, 2026.

"Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name"

I once wrote that Alan Jacobs' students were very fortunate. At the end of this semester he is retiring from Baylor. He is teaching a course he calls “The Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century.” He writes "Of all the classes I’ve ever taught, it’s the one that’s closest to my heart."

In a recent class meeting, we were discussing some of Auden’s poems from the 1930s. Next month we’ll turn to his later poems, the ones that he wrote after his return to the Christian faith. But right now I’m having the students read his earlier work so we can see the ways in which his conscience began to trouble him and give him the gradually growing suspicion that there might be something more to the world than he had previously guessed. We saw how, as he grew closer and closer to Christian faith, the language of the Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer began to saturate his poems. When we got to “Atlantis,” a poem he wrote just as he was beginning to attend an Episcopal church in Brooklyn Heights, a short walk from where he lived, I called my students’ attention to this stanza:

Stagger onward rejoicing;
  And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
  To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
  Descend, you should still be proud
  Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
  In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
  Having seen your salvation.

I asked my students whether anything here reminded them of anything else. A couple of them immediately said, “That’s Moses! Looking down at the Promised Land, but he can’t enter it.” Yep. Then: “That ‘having seen your salvation,’ that’s from the Gospels, right? That old man …” Another voice: “Simeon!” General nodding. Moses and Simeon—what do they have in common? Why might Auden be thinking of them? Is he like them? Is this poem not about himself but about others? (It’s addressed to “You,” after all.) Much to discuss—once you can hear the echoes of the biblical stories. ....

How many American university students, in the Year of Our Lord 2026, are able to recognize the Christian allusions and quotations that poets like Auden expected their readers to be able to identify? Not many; not many at all, as a percentage of the overall population. ....

I am expecting to receive Jacobs' book about Dorothy L. Sayers this week.

Alan Jacobs, "Things They Carry," The Dispatch, Oct. 11, 2026.

Democracy and Tradition

A G.K. Chesterton quotation referred to this morning in an Alan Jacobs post:

Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. ....

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter III: "The Suicide of Thought," 1908.

Old posts on this site

I've been blogging at One Eternal Day since I retired some twenty years ago. Every now and then one of my early efforts appears among the list of "Popular Posts" in the right-hand column. I assume that is because someone found it by doing a search and then shared the results. Unfortunately, often, the links on that decade or more old post are broken. If I notice, I will try to find a current URL that will restore the content, especially if that content has enduring interest. I just did that for the pdf link in the "We Glorify Thy Name" post. 

"And to this day, the group of Christians, named after this one, has not disappeared"

In the opinion section of The Wall Street Journal this morning, an account appears of one scholar's argument that Josephus' Antiquities may provide early evidence for Christian belief in the resurrection:

For a seminar paper, Mr. Schmidt examined the oldest non-Christian account of Jesus. It’s a small section in a much bigger work, but the passage is so famous that it has its own Latin name: “Testimonium Flavianum.” The big work is a history of the Jewish people, titled Antiquities. The author is the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, often shortened to “Josephus.” Most scholars consider Josephus a reliable source of information about major events such as the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. as well as the siege of Masada a few years later.

The “Testimonium Flavianum” is a brief biography of Jesus. It says that Jesus was a teacher who performed miracles, died on a cross under Pontius Pilate and reappeared to his followers. The passage is only several sentences long, but scholars have devoted an incalculable number of words to it. Their most fundamental question is whether it’s real or fake. Presented with this Solomonic choice, most have chosen to split the difference. The consensus for many years has been that Josephus probably wrote several lines about Jesus but that later Christian scribes embellished them so that they agree with the claims of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

“I thought the passage was probably doctored,” says Mr. Schmidt. “But as I read the manuscripts that have come down to us, I kept seeing something else.” ....

The original manuscript of the “Testimonium Flavianum” no longer exists, but the passage survives in various forms with small differences in five languages: Greek, Latin, Armenian, Arabic and Syriac. Mr. Schmidt examined them all, reading versions stored in academic databases and visiting the British Museum, the Vatican Library and even a monastery in the Egyptian desert.

A common argument against the authenticity of the “Testimonium Flavianum” is that it feels too Christian to have been written by a Jew. Through a statistical analysis of linguistic style, however, Mr. Schmidt determined that key words and phrases in the passage are consistent with how Josephus used them elsewhere in his writings.

Mr. Schmidt contends that the most common renderings of the “Testimonium Flavianum” need an update, based on what he has gleaned from rare manuscripts. Josephus didn’t declare of Jesus that “He was the Christ,” but made a more tentative statement: “He was thought to be the Christ.” Josephus didn’t call Jesus “a doer of miraculous deeds” but rather “a doer of incredible deeds” or “a doer of paranormal deeds,” in formulations that are less encumbered by the Christian sense of the word “miracle.” And Mr. Schmidt translates “he appeared to them alive again on the third day” as “on the third day it seemed to them that he was alive again.” This new way of reading Josephus offers a much more neutral account of Jesus—and one that feels like it could be the authentic voice of a first-century Jew committed to fair and balanced reporting.

Mr. Schmidt also considers sources. Josephus was born shortly after the Crucifixion, but he was in fact only two degrees separated from Jesus. He probably knew a variety of people who had encountered the celebrated Galilean, such as the brother-in-law of Caiaphas, the priest who presided over the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin. The parents of Josephus also seem to have been in Jerusalem at the time of the critical events. We may never know what they and others said about Jesus to Josephus, if anything, but it’s easy to imagine them discussing a figure who had caused such a stir.

The stakes are high, at least for scholars. If Mr. Schmidt is right, it may suggest that Christians held their basic ideas about the life of Jesus at an early date—and that their belief in the resurrection, for example, wasn’t based on a legend from decades later, as many scholars have maintained. “We must follow the evidence,” writes Mr. Schmidt in the final line of his book. “The ‘Testimonium Flavianum’ is authentic, and within it there resides a compelling witness to the origins of Christianity.” .... (more).

T.C. Schmidt, "Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ," Oxford University Press. (free download)

John J. Miller, "Unlocking the Josephus Code," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 6, 2026.

"Only asking questions"

I have renamed this post since the original made little sense.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is a former British MP and a Minister in the last Conservative government. He recently argued that Britain needs to be militarily prepared for further Russian aggression. Tucker Carlson, on his podcast, called him a "posh fool" who wanted to send kids to die in pointless conflict. Carlson, the actual fool, then invited Reese-Mogg on his show and proceeded to demonstrate that fact. From the exchange:

.... In the show, titled “Tucker Confronts Britain’s Most Pro-War Advocate”, the firebrand broadcaster also appeared to suggest that Britain’s involvement in [WWII] was unnecessary because Hitler had repeatedly claimed that he did not want to fight the UK.

Sir Jacob said: “You seem to be putting more trust in Hitler than I would. He said all sorts of things.”

Following a brief history lesson about Neville Chamberlain’s promise of “peace for our time” after his meeting with Hitler shortly before Nazi forces invaded Poland, Sir Jacob offered the American a little advice.

“I’m very surprised you’re verging on defending Hitler. I think this is not really what you want to be doing,” he said, explaining that it was essential that “we should learn from history”.

Carlson replied: “Yeah, I guess I’m just a secret Nazi. I’m actually not a secret Nazi...and hardly a public Nazi.”

Sir Jacob, 57, responded, “I’m reassured”, before explaining that, if the UK had not gone to war, “Germany would have invaded us”. ....

Carlson, 57, also suggested that the Second World War was still being “presented” by Britain as a “good thing” despite it having “destroyed” the empire.

Tucker Carlson asked Sir Jacob whether Britain had ‘benefited’ from taking on the Nazis.

“It was the classic good versus evil. We did the right thing,” Sir Jacob said, as he tried to explain the motivation behind going to war with a dictator who had invaded his neighbouring countries and exterminated millions of Jews.

But Carlson – apparently eager to understand “cause and effect” – wanted to know whether the UK had “benefited” from taking on Hitler.

Sir Jacob responded: “To have defeated Hitler? Yes.”

Carlson asked: “The UK is a better country now? It is a healthier country?”

Sir Jacob: “In other words, we would all be speaking German.”

The US broadcaster then said “Who cares?”, adding that “a lot of people in Britain” do not speak English, so if Germany had won, “at least a European language [would have been] spoken in your country”.

Carlson went on to suggest that “the beautiful country [of Britain]” had been “destroyed” and had “lost self-respect” after winning the war.

“I see no advantage in speaking German over any other language,” Sir Jacob explained. “We want to speak English, thank you so much. Our self-respect was greatly maintained by defeating the greatest evil the world has known.”

Carlson remained undeterred. He claimed that the British military victory had culminated in “foreign” troops being stationed on British soil.

Once again, Sir Jacob appeared surprised by Carlson’s assertion, pointing out that, as a member of NATO, the UK had agreed to host US bases during the Cold War because of fears of a Russian invasion.

Sir Jacob suggested that history showed that if an enemy thinks its adversary is “weak”, wars can start by accident.

“If you show that you are strong, then the invasion doesn’t happen,” he said. “If Hitler had thought we were strong, then Poland would not have been invaded.” ....

When Tucker's opinions are challenged, his frequent response has been that he "was only asking questions."

Steve Bird, "Rees-Mogg: Tucker Carlson ‘verging on defending Hitler’," The Telegraph, Oct 3, 2026.

An "insidious form of censorship"

As "Banned Book Week" approaches, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) provides some tools to insure public libraries avoid bias:

Every October, Banned Books Week arrives with a familiar script: one side warns that censorship is sweeping the nation, and the other insists nobody is banning anything. Both camps dig in their heels, and the public walks away more confused than before.

This year, Banned Books Week runs October 4–10 and ends with Freedom to Read Day on October 10. FAIR believed this debate deserves better framing. We should ask not only which books are being removed, but which books never reached shelves at all.

When officials pull books from a public library because they dislike the ideas inside, intellectual freedom suffers. But a more insidious form of censorship often happens earlier, when the people choosing books decide certain perspectives simply don’t belong in libraries. As a result, a library can loudly celebrate Banned Books Week while stocking dozens of titles on one side of a contested issue and ignoring the others.

FAIR’s solution is simple: a neutral library that doesn’t tell patrons what to think, offers viewpoint diversity, applies its policies fairly, and trusts readers to decide for themselves. ....

"Banned Books Week: The Freedom to Read Needs a Neutral Library," FAIR, Oct. 2, 2026.

The human experience of combat

I have never served in the military and, consequently, have no personal visceral knowledge of the experience of, or cost to, those who have. My knowledge of war comes entirely from books, movies, and documentaries. I just came across, at Five Books, a military historian's recommendations of books he believes convey the experience of combat. I have read three of them, portions of a fourth, and have seen films and documentaries based on all but one. My sense is that the ones I've read are pretty accurate. One that I lent to a Korean War veteran, came back with lots of notations very much agreeing with its author. The historian making these choices is Iain MacGregor, author of Battle: The Moments that Transformed Warfare from Ancient Greece to Ukraine. He writes about his book:

What I discovered was, the more research I did—whether it was ancient history, medieval, Tudor, Napoleonic, World War Two—that while the tactics and technology have changed radically, the human dimension is always the same. It’s about human beings.

Whether it’s the commanders, or the line officers on the ground, or the soldiers, they’ve all got the same frailties you and I have got. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a Greek hoplite, a Tudor English sailor, or a Ukrainian soldier on the front line today, you’re still scared. It’s about how you react under pressure. If you’re a commander, it’s about the timing, about how you deal with sudden events.

That hasn’t changed ever, and writing this book over this whole timeline really confirmed that to me.

One of the books he recommends, The Face of Battle (1976), is one I've read, and is the book my Korean War veteran friend approved. I've posted about it before. From MacGregor's comments:

John Keegan’s The Face of Battle is arguably the most influential work of military history written in the last fifty years. It radically altered the next generation of published historians coming through.

Before Keegan—and I’ve read a lot of books that came out before—it was always about the great people, generally men of military history. You’re looking at warfare or the battle itself from the top down. You learn about the great strategist who might have won or lost the battle, but not what life was like on the front line for the ordinary person doing the fighting. That’s what Keegan brings to it. ....

It gives you an insider’s idea and appreciation of what they were facing. How ferocious was the fighting? Did the tactics work? Did they fail? Was the weather that big of a factor? Was the longbow that big a factor? He brings it to the page in the way that someone like Bernard Cornwell would do in fiction. He really brings it alive, and you want to find out what’s happened to this person he’s writing about, or that unit. That’s what I’ve always found captivating.

Another I've read is The Price of Glory (1962) by Alistair Horne. It's about the First World War battle of Verdun.

The Battle of Verdun was a ten-month-long ordeal in which France and Germany sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men for a few miles of devastated ground. It’s why the Battle of the Somme was necessary to the north, as we, the British, were trying to relieve the pressure on Verdun, which lay to the southeast of our own trenchlines. ....

Far from the fighting in Belgium, the sector had been relatively quiet, which was precisely why the Germans chose it. Their aim was not simply to seize ground, but to destroy France’s will to continue the war. As one German commander put it, they would ‘bleed France white’.

The battle opened on 21 February 1916 with one of the heaviest bombardments the world had yet seen. Around a million shells crashed onto French positions on the first day alone. For weeks the Germans seemed unstoppable. Fort after fort came under attack, French units were hurled into the line and shattered by artillery fire, and Verdun became an industrialised slaughterhouse on a scale scarcely imaginable. By the spring of 1916, it appeared possible that the Germans might break through altogether.

Yet Verdun produced the opposite result from the one Berlin expected. Instead of crushing French morale, it hardened it. ....

The other recommendations include a novel I know well, The Killer Angels (1974) by Michael Shaara, about Gettysburg, With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge, a Marine veteran of the Pacific in World War II, and a book that is unfamiliar to me: A Soldier’s Song (1992) by Ken Lukowiak, a veteran of the Falklands War.

It seems a pretty good reading list. I am curious what combat veterans would think.

"The best books on Battles," Five Books, Sept 27, 2026.

Savoring the real beauties

Is reading a book more than once a waste of time? Not if it was worth reading the first time. From C.S. Lewis' essay "On Stories" (1947):

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books'. I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty--except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crême de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey. ....

An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristram Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he 'has read' them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? Yet I think the test has a special application to the matter in hand. For excitement....is just what must disappear from a second reading. You cannot, except at the first reading, be really curious about what happened. If you find that the reader of popular romance—however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances—goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry. ....

Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the 'surprise' of discovering that what seemed Little-Red-Riding-Hood's grandmother is really the wolf. It is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia ["a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation especially in a literary work" Merriam-Webster]. ....

C.S. Lewis, "On Stories," Of Other Worlds, 1968.

“Every country gets the government that it deserves”

Many non-MAGA conservatives and Christians voted for Trump because he seemed the lesser of evils and promised to do things that they valued. But as his tenure approaches its end, a reassessment of the damage he has done is underway. Conservatives, and especially conservatives who are Christian, once valued good character when deciding who to support. R.R. Reno, the editor of First Things, someone I have thought was inclined to rationalize Trump's behavior:

The Trump family’s exploitation of every opportunity to enrich themselves demoralizes me, as I’m sure it does many readers. Don Jr. and Eric Trump are the Uday and Qusay Hussein of our unhappy times, harvesting great sums from investors who seem interested in influencing the White House. (Kevin Williamson made this observation back in 2016.) Earlier this year, it was revealed that powerful figures in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture. This is by no means the only infusion of large sums into Uday and Qusay’s enterprises. I find myself wondering if America’s Middle East foreign policy is for sale.

More than two centuries ago, the wry political thinker Joseph de Maistre quipped, “Every country gets the government that it deserves.” This dictum should inform our assessments of Donald Trump’s now decade-long dominance of American public life. We must consider his regular recourse to fabricated facts and his family’s misuse of public office along with actions we’ve supported in these pages, such as his judicial appointments, measures to encourage re-industrialization, and anti-DEI executive orders. The good and bad in this administration are difficult to untangle.

Perhaps all administrations are corrupt to some degree. But the present situation is unique in its blatant character....

“Everyone is doing it” is never a legitimate excuse for prevarication and misuse of office. And furthermore, everyone is not trading on his power and position to enrich himself. My point is that the rot runs deep. Repair will require leaders who value honor over wealth. (more)

R.R. Reno, "The Stench of Corruption," First Things, Sept. 25, 2026.

Counterfeit Aslan

Hardy surprised to read "...that members of [C.S. Lewis'] family are 'very upset' by Meryl Streep's casting as Aslan in Netflix's upcoming Narnia adaptation and are attempting to 'regain control' of the company that manages the literary and media rights to Lewis' works." Greta Gerwig was probably not the best choice to direct an adaptation of The Magician's Nephew:

Gerwig, who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, has said she envisions her adaptation of The Magician's Nephew to be "a rock opera," claiming, "David Bowie saved my life. Paul McCartney saved my life. David Gilmour saved my life. Pete Townshend saved my life. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant. ... Narnia is literally a world made out of music. It is a world sung to life by Aslan."

In a 2018 interview, Gerwig said she feels "uncomfortable around 'Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior stuff,' I find that creepy, but I go to church every Sunday." She claimed she would attend multiple services across different denominations on the same day, but noted she appreciates prayers to the Virgin Mary because "it feels like this 'God the Father' thing is a bit alienating for me."

Liel Leibovitz, at The Free Press, explains "Why You Should Care That Aslan Is a Woman":

To understand why, it helps to first know Aslan.

Read the series’ first novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you’ll learn the following about everyone’s favorite leader of the pride: Sacrificing himself to save the sinful boy Edmund, he allows himself to be bound to a stone table and slain. Then—no spoiler, I hope, for a book published 76 years ago—he comes back from the dead because of the deeper magic he possesses, which he inherited from his father, Narnia’s supreme spiritual being, who is known only as Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Aslan is meant to emulate. Any fifth grader could point toward Jesus—which is precisely what a class full of actual fifth graders argued in a letter to Lewis in 1954. The author, however, wrote back right away, telling the children they had it dead wrong.

“I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia,’ ” Lewis wrote from his office in Oxford Magdalen College. “I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.’ If you think about it, you will see that it is quite a different thing.”

.... All the author did was project Christ into a different world, where, he told another correspondent, “He would really have been a physical object...as He was in Palestine and His death on the Stone Table would have been a physical event no less than His death on Calvary.” And if little boys and girls walked away from the books loving Aslan, then the faithful author would’ve achieved his goal....

Lewis, in fact, was so eager for his readers to understand this point that he had Aslan deliver it forcefully and clearly in the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth novel in the Narnia series. In one climactic moment, Aslan tells the children that he exists in their world, too. “But there,” he adds, “I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” ....

I may yet, of course, be wrong. Gerwig’s Magician’s Nephew may reveal itself to be a faithful and respectful adaptation. But all signs point to the contrary. ....

[Gerwig]’s not merely telling us that the Ghostbusters now ought to be women because #girlpower. She’s taking the most beloved, prominent, and resonant bit of Christian storytelling created in the past 100 years and seemingly turning it into something not only radically different but anathema to the original. (more)

The illustration is Pauline Baynes' from The Last Battle, of the ape "Shift" with the donkey "Puzzle," who is wearing a lion suit: a "counterfeit Aslan"

Liel Leibovitz, "Why You Should Care That Aslan Is a Woman," The Free Press, Sept. 25, 2026.

Friends and rivals

When Tolkien's memorial is placed in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey next year, it will be near that of C.S. Lewis. "[H]e and Lewis will be, in death, within pipe-lighting distance of each other – at least in spirit." Philip Womack in The Telegraph:

.... Lewis and Tolkien bore many similarities: Lewis was also conservative and deeply Christian.

.... Both fought, and were scarred by, the First World War. They also both enjoyed smoking a good pipe.

Their rivalry took many forms, as they sized each other up from opposing sides of a bitterly fought war in the Oxford English department. Tolkien sprang from the unfashionable school of philology, and thought anything after Chaucer was too miminy-piminy to be the proper subject of a degree. This rankled with Lewis, whose works of literary criticism on Renaissance writings still stand strong today.

Tolkien saw his work as an act of “sub-creation”, inspired directly by God. His Middle Earth was built up from language itself, extrapolated into a unified whole. Its purpose was to resonate as mythic history for the English, filled with Anglo-Saxon echoes. Surprisingly, Middle Earth’s spiritual aspect is pre-Christian: no Christ figure walks alongside the hobbits, breathing strength into their steps.

Lewis, on the other hand, adopted a hodge-podge approach which, on the whole, Tolkien disliked. How, for example, can Father Christmas exist in Lewis’ Narnia, a mythical world of talking animals, when Christ did not visit it? Aslan the lion is the Narnian version of the Son of God, with different functions to Jesus (he appears, for example, at the Creation of the World.)

There’s also the mixed bag of fauns, hags, dryads and so forth, drawn from numerous sources. Even Bacchus pops up. ....

Their most powerful link, though, was their shared faith, manifested in particular in the idea of joy. In his writings, Tolkien was interested in what he termed “eucatastrophe”, or a “sudden joyous turn”, demonstrating the existence of God’s Providence. Lewis explored a similar idea of “joy” in his memoir, Surprised by Joy. Whenever Aslan appears in Narnia, characters become overwhelmed with the emotion. .... (more)

Philip Womack, "Tolkien and CS Lewis were the best of frenemies," The Telegraph, Sept. 24, 2026.

Willy Wonka in Narnia

Those of us who value The Narnia Chronicles have already read enough to be dubious about Netflix's upcoming 2027 version of The Magician's Nephew. It is entirely unnecessary to be a Christian believer to entertain that doubt. The production appears to have made many bad decisions, quite apart from messing with Aslan's gender. From The Telegraph, by someone obviously familiar with the books:

Uncle Andrew and Jadis

As anyone who has read the book will know, the Edwardian setting is crucial to its tone – self-consciously setting it before the First World War at a time England is still innocent and the horrors of the Somme have yet to rise out of some great hellish pit.

That prelapsarian quality is key to the story, which is essentially the origin tale of Professor Digory Kirke, the eccentric owner of the wardrobe which grants access to Narnia in later books. The Magician’s Nephew is in its essence a book set Before The Fall. At the start of the story, the wicked Jadis is trapped in suspended animation in a post-apocalyptic alternative dimension, Narnia has yet to be created by Aslan and Britain is looking forward to a century of peace. But then two children – Digory and his friend Polly – muddle around and everything changes utterly. Jadis is unleashed, evil is free and tranquility is shattered – literally so, when the future ruler of Narnia runs amok in London in scenes that have the quality of a steampunk Grand Theft Auto.

That is in contrast to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which unfolds against the background of the Blitz and where readers can infer that the children are quietly traumatised by the horror of war – one reason why they leap so readily into the great unknown of the wardrobe. But if you shunt The Magician’s Nephew forward to the post-war austerity of the 1950s, then that dynamic is changed utterly: the calm-before-the-storm aspect of the Edwardian period is missing.

If Jadis is the monster in this story, then the part of pathetic villain is played by Digory’s eccentric Uncle Andrew, a self-involved boffin who tricks Polly into disappearing into another dimension by having her touch a magic ring – then blackmails Digory into setting off to rescue her. The “Magician” in The Magician’s Nephew, as written by Lewis, has few redeeming features. Yet in Gerwig’s film he’s played by the charming Daniel Craig; judging by new images, he will be a lovable boffin, a sort of Willy Wonka of the Lewis-verse. .... (more)

Ed Power, "Netflix’s $280m ‘rock opera’ Narnia film is even madder than it sounds," The Telegraph, Sept. 20, 2026.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away...Blessed be the name of the Lord

Patrick Kurp quoted a portion of a Samuel Johnson essay on his blog this morning. He linked to it, and I followed the link. Johnson himself suffered from many infirmities, both physical and psychologically vexatious:

So large a part of human life passes in a state contrary to our natural desires, that one of the principal topicks of moral instruction is the art of bearing calamities. And such is the certainty of evil, that it is the duty of every man to furnish his mind with those principles that may enable him to act under it with decency and propriety. ....

That life has many miseries, and that those miseries are, sometimes at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally confessed; and therefore it is useful to consider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs, or the infirmities of nature, must bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened, and how we may make those hours less wretched, which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy. ....

The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony, or prolonging its effects. ....

In those evils which are allotted to us by Providence, such as deformity, privation of any of the senses, or old age, it is always to be remembered, that impatience can have no present effect, but to deprive us of the consolations which our condition admits....

The chief security against the fruitless anguish of impatience, must arise from frequent reflection on the wisdom and goodness of the God of nature, in whose hands are riches and poverty, honour and disgrace, pleasure and pain, and life and death. A settled conviction of the tendency of every thing to our good, and of the possibility of turning miseries into happiness, by receiving them rightly, will incline us to bless the name of the Lord, whether he gives or takes away. (more)

Samuel Johnson, "No. 32. The vanity of stoicism. The necessity of patience," The Rambler, July, 1750.

Aslan

I've been reading and enjoying The Narnia Chronicles for a very long time. They are great children's books and, like all good children's literature, are enjoyed by adults. C.S. Lewis, who authored the Narnia books, once wrote: “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.” There is, of course, Christian allegory in the books, but I once suggested that to a class of 9^th graders, many of whom had grown up with the books, and was greeted with shocked denial. The books are enjoyed by kids whether or not the underlying Christian sensibility is recognized.

I have enjoyed some television and film adaptations of these books. I had been looking forward to the upcoming Netflix adaptations, but am increasingly skeptical. First, a minor objection is that they have chosen the wrong book to adapt first. The first story should be from the first book published, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. That is because reading (or watching) The Magician's Nephew first destroys the magic of LWW by, among other revelations, telling the reader who Aslan is. Nevertheless...

A more serious objection for me arose this week when I learned that Meryl Streep will voice Aslan. Aslan is male. He has a mane. Female lions do not, and I am very doubtful that the film will portray a lioness. Aslan has a mane:

"Are you ill, dear Aslan ?" asked Susan.

"No," said Aslan. "I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that." ....

“Stop!” said the Witch. “Let him first be shaved.”

Another roar of mean laughter went up from her followers as an ogre with a pair of shears came forward and squatted down by Aslan’s head. Snip-snip-snip went the shears and masses of curling gold began to fall to the ground. Then the ogre stood back and the children, watching from their hiding-place, could see the face of Aslan looking all small and different without its mane. The enemies also saw the difference. ....

“We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me.”

And he crouched down, and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back, and Susan sat first holding on tightly to his mane, and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan. And with a great heave he rose underneath them and then shot off, faster than any horse could go, downhill and into the thick of the forest. .... (from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, emphasis added)

No doubt I will watch it when it comes, but I am increasingly apprehensive.

The picture is by Pauline Baynes, Narnia's original illustrator.

"Mercy" killing

Several countries, among them Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and now also some of the more "progressive" American states, have adopted "medically assisted suicide." But not, so far, Great Britain. "How Britain Escaped Assisted Suicide" explains some of the reasons, and they are good reasons:

In June 2025 Janet Daby, the Member of Parliament for Lewisham East, started having nightmares: terrible images of death and dying that disturbed her sleep and haunted her conscience. She didn’t need a psychotherapist to interpret them. That month she had joined 313 other MPs in voting through an assisted suicide bill. She was beginning to think she might have made the wrong choice, and the 291 MPs on the other side might have made the right one.

There was one conversation that added to Daby’s doubts: someone she knew who had HIV and AIDS, and who many years before, with a bleak prognosis, had wished for the swift exit of an assisted death; but who had since found the right drugs, and made a decent life for himself. The kind of person who might be swallowed up by a state suicide service before he or she had the chance to find help. That was the kind of person she had endangered with her vote. And now it was too late.

But the British constitution, like life, sometimes gives you a second chance. ....

A lot of people assumed that the Lords (who are appointed, not elected) would have to wave through a bill of such importance, given that elected representatives had approved it. The Lords themselves were less persuadable.

And as they examined the bill, over a long period in late 2025 and early 2026, they began to uncover the same kind of problems as Janet Daby. The Royal College of Psychiatrists pointed out, to a committee convened by the Lords, that if people were depressed, the state would help them kill themselves—without asking too many questions about what help they needed. Experts in coercion observed that if people were being psychologically terrorized by an abusive partner, the state would help them kill themselves. One organization after another pointed out that if people fell through the gaps in Britain’s rickety health and care system, the state would help them kill themselves. ....

What swung the result? Perhaps less one issue than a steady accumulation of doubts. Hospices and care homes might be closed or defunded—this was explicitly threatened by one of the main proponents of the bill. Disabled people would come under pressure. People would die because the health system had failed them. The high costs of care would provide a powerful incentive for death. .... (more)

Dan Hitchens, "How Britain Escaped Assisted Suicide," First Things, Sept. 11, 2026.