The Inklings FRIDAY, JULY 23

   As I was trying to explain to Mr. Beaver, the Inklings were a group of friends who met regularly for literary purposes.  For many years they met at the Eagle and Child (affectionately called the Bird&Baby because of its sign, the original of which Walter Hooper preserved and which now hangs in the library at the Kilns) but when a remodel did away with their private room near the end of his life Lewis led the group across the street to the Lamb and Flag (where incidentally Thomas Hardy did much of his writing, including Jude the Obscure).  Some of the works that had their first reading at the Bird&Baby were Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet.

   The pub is now the place that most C.S. Lewis lovers visit when in Oxford, and luckily it has decent food, especially pies (not dessert pies).  I sampled several at lunch.  A colleague who works at the international hq of IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, of which InterVarsity is the US member organization) actually was proposed to here...