The Inklings Variety Hour

From the Old Winyards: Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters (Saturday Rerun)

Enjoy this gently used Christmas gift from Ghost of Inklings Variety Hours Past!

It's an Inklings Variety Hour Jovial Christmas Extravaganza!  Featuring:

A Discussion of J.R.R. Tolkien's Letters from Father Christmas!

Chris Pipkin and his children, Davey and Virginia!  

Anika Smith! (First half of show) 

Meagan Logsdon!  (Second half of show) 

A cringeworthy impersonation of an old British person by Chris Pipkin!

Bits of music by Steeleye Span and Maddy Prior (The Boar's Head Carol), and Martin Romberg (A Elbereth Gilthoniel), (as well as Virginia Pipkin).

Pipkins' Christmas site promoted: 12tide.com

Thanks for listening to us this year!  As always, if you enjoy this podcast, recommend it to a friend and give us a review on iTunes.  And please do feel more than free to drop us a line at InklingsVarietyHour@gmail.com.  We'd love to hear from you!  Merry Christmas.

The Wind in the Willows

Chris is joined by Angela Teal and Marena Bleech of In the Burrow Books to discuss Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows!

More episode description to come! In the meantime, enjoy!

Twelve Tide (Saturday Rerun)

Original Description:

O.G. Host Anika Smith rejoins the podcast to interview Chris and his beautiful and omnicompetent wife, Glencora, about their new Christmas resource book, Twelve Tide. 

Part of what we're trying to do with this book is make Christmas less a single-morning present binge preceded by anxiety and followed by anticlimax--and more a season of twelve days of giving, feasting, and learning to celebrate better.

Want an idea of what's in the book? Check out our website, 12tide.com.

We are all Niatirbians now (and Lewis was dismayed by godless Christmas cards).  We want to reconcile sacred and "secular" aspects of Christmas and equip people with some old ways to celebrate this season. 

Music from this episode includes:

• George Winston's "The Holly and the Ivy"
• Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"
• Loreena McKennitt's "The Holly and the Ivy"
• Choir of Christchurch's "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"
• Loreena McKennitt's "Gloucestershire Wassail"
• The Chieftains' "Boar's Head Carol"
• Maddy Prior's "Coventry Carol"
• Medieval Baebes' "Adam Lay Ybounden"
• Maddy Prior's "Wassail!"

Also, if you're interested in the Twelve Tide Spotify list Anika suggested on the show, here it is.

Stay tuned...I'm done with grading and I'm turning my attention to an Inklings Christmas Carol.  Won't be easy to finish in time, but I'll do my level best.  If you are interested in reading a part for it, feel free to email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

God bless and keep you this Advent Season. See you at Christmas!

Romanticism and the Inklings

Author Jonathan Geltner and newcomer James Lapeyre join Chris to discuss the question that has doubtless kept all of us awake in the pre-dawn hours:

Who was more of a Romantic: C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien?

Yes, the stakes have never been higher.

We also talk generally about how the Inklings' view of their own roles overlapped with (and were influenced by) those of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantics. To what extent were the Inklings the real Romantics of their own age?

I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks to both James and Jonathan for coming on the show. 

Apologies to all of you for the poor sound quality of my microphone. Also, a little more than halfway through, the Internet goes out--apologies for that, though we do find our footing pretty quickly thereafter.

Many, many thanks to James for fixing the sound so that I'm actually intelligible here. Check out his substack at otterhat.substack.com/. Check out Jonathan's at jonathangeltner.substack.com/

I appreciate everyone's patience for this episode! Circumstances have conspired so that I have less time to edit since the semester ended, but I'll keep grinding these out occasionally if you all keep listening! I'll also try to keep putting out the old episodes Saturdays.

Also! As always, my wife and I have a Christmas site and a Christmas book. If you're looking for ways to celebrate Advent and Christmas that both engage with the storehouse of tradition available to us--while allowing you and your family to forge your own Christmas traditions, you might find them helpful! The basic premise is that rather than having one day of Christmas (so much pressure!), we spread gift-giving out over the traditional twelve days of Christmas and pair it with reflection and other activities. It's really worked wonderfully for our family.

As always, email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com if you have thoughts! And give us a five-star rating on iTunes (why not, it's Christmas) if you like what you hear.

Also, I am planning to record on The Horse and His Boy this month (to be released at the beginning of Season 5 in March). If you'd like to join us to talk about it, just let me know!

Friendship (from the Old, Old Winyards)

Apologies for the audio quality on this one! It's the very first podcast Anika and I recorded, along with my wife, Glencora! It dates from 2018, when audio was much rougher. I'm sure you remember. Cleaned up what I could. Minimal swearing, too.

I thought I'd post it in preparation for the C.S. Lewis Reading Day livestream.  You can find it here: C. S. Lewis Reading Day 2024 - Pints With Jack

 

C.S. Lewis Reading Day Livestream Announcement

Join me (and a few other Lewis podcast hosts) on the Pints with Jack C.S. Lewis Reading Day Livestream.

You can find it here: C. S. Lewis Reading Day 2024 - Pints With Jack

Thanks, as always, to Pints with Jack, for their generosity and initiative! 

From the Old Winyards: War in Heaven, Part 5 (Saturday Rerun)

Sorry for the late Saturday upload! Another classic in the War in Heaven series.

Welcome back!  In this final episode covering Charles Williams' spiritual thriller, War in Heaven, we discuss the conclusion of the book!  What does Charles Williams have in common with J.K. Rowling?  Is Gregory the Satanist the secret protagonist of this book?  And finally, what do you do if a priest falls down dead in the middle of mass, but it was a really pleasant service otherwise?  Stay tuned next time for a bonus episode, after which we will be talking about J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories."

 

If the Inklings squaring off against Aleister Crowley tickles your fancy, please do go pick up a copy of Heaven's War by Micah Harris with art by Michael Gaydos!

From the Old Winyards: War In Heaven, Part 4 (Saturday Rerun)

From the past! Original description:

This is part four of our five-part discussion of War in Heaven, Charles' Williams' modern take on the Holy Graal Quest.  In the chapters we discuss this week, Gregory Persimmons drives Barbara Rackstraw insane using "the ointment," in order to obtain both the Graal and Barbara and Lionel's son, Adrian.  The guardians of the Graal willingly trade the Graal for Barbara's sanity, only to have her cured by an unexpected visitor...who is somehow the Graal himself.  It's not who you think.  In this episode, Satanism meets pessimism, devotion to relics meets humanism, and everybody meets Prester John. 

 

9/22: Happy Hobbit Day!  We're talking about Charles Williams, but we do mention the hobbits (with reference to homeliness and attachment to objects) in a few places.  

 

Works referenced:

 

War in Heaven, by Charles Williams;

 

"Hermeticism and the Metaphysics of Goodness in the Novels of Charles Williams," by Scott McLaren (Mythlore);

 

The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend, by Alan Lupack;

 

 

Music:

 

"Venus," by Gustav Holst

 

"Lohengrin," by Richard Wagner

 

"Princes of the Universe" by Queen. 

 

(Here's the intro that I parody.  Note: Inklings Variety Hour does not formally endorse the USA show "Highlander"--based on the movie of the same name--even if it was awesome.)

 

_Thank you_ to those of you who have left reviews and ratings on iTunes and elsewhere!  Please don't hesitate to drop us a line if you'd like--we'd love to know who you are and what you're interested in hearing us cover in the future!  Our email is InklingsVarietyHour@gmail.com. 

Camp Narnia: The Gangurru (Camp Monsters Parody)

If you already listened to this, my apologies! 

I think my releasing it the afternoon before Halloween (rather than the week before) meant that it wasn't on many people's radar. 

I'm quite proud of it (and worked hard on it), so I'm re-releasing. I know it's not Halloween anymore, but, hey--it's also not Christmas, and you don't see that deterring most businesses from playing Bing Crosby.

 

From the Old Winyards: War in Heaven, Part 3 (Saturday Rerun)

Another classic from the vaults. 

Original description: 

This week, we're covering Part III of Charles Williams' supernatural thriller, War in Heaven, in which the good guys (The Archdeacon, Kenneth Mornington, and the Duke) steal the Graal back from Gregory Persimmons, who desires to use it for his own dark purposes.  They then must pray to prevent the Graal from being magically disintegrated from a long distance by Manasseh and Dmitri, two more advanced members of Gregory's shady organization.  We'll also witness a friendship blossoming between all three of our protagonists, talk about how holy and unholy detachment can help make for a very exciting* plot, throw a little shade at King Henry VIII, discuss pagan interpretations of the Graal, and speculate about how P.G. Wodehouse may have been the secret ingredient in Gregory's eventual redemption.  This conversation went well over an hour--if you simply can't get enough of Charles Williams, you're in for a treat.  And hang around (if you'd like) for some bonus material at the very end--should be worth a laugh or two.  I mean, we laugh, anyway.

 

Music from Lohengrin by Wagner, Mercury by Holst, Venus by Holst, and, of course, "Take the Land," by Don Potter.

 

We reference William Blake's poem, "And did those feet in ancient time," which speculates on the very strange legend that the boy Jesus may have been taken to England by Joseph of Arimathea at some point--presumably a pre-Graal excursion for Joseph (I don't think even Blake believed this, though).  "And did those feet" was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry as "Jerusalem," an anthem/hymn that helped revive the drooping nationalism of British troops during World War I and remains popular to this day.

 

If you haven't read any of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster series, we encourage you to drop everything and do so as soon as possible.  

 

Finally, this podcast will probably be more fun for you if you read along with us.  Feel free to pick up a copy of Charles Williams' War in Heaven!

 

If you're enjoying these episodes and have constructive feedback, we'd love to hear from you!  Our email is InklingsVarietyHour@gmail.com.  Feel free also to leave us a review on iTunes if you want to see more of this sort of thing.