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The Inklings Handbook

Who was rude about the elves?

THE INKLINGS HANDBOOK
By Colin Duriez and David Porter
Azure. 244 pages
ISBN 1 902694 13 9

What qualifications have I for reviewing this book? I do not attend meetings of the Lewis and Tolkien societies and dress up as one of the characters but I realise that I have overlapped with the Inklings in various ways.

The Screwtape Letters and the broadcast talks came out when I was at school in evacuation during the war. They were widely read at school but none of us had personal radios in those days to listen to the original talks. The Lewis science fiction series came out when I was at university. Much later on, a friend at hospital introduced me to Tolkien. St. Thomas's had an excellent library for patients and staff which, because of endowments, was on a much more generous scale than most hospital libraries. A friend, who finished up as a distinguished Dame, introduced me to The Lord of the Rings and said I was lucky because the third volume was now out. She was a reader who had been left hanging in the air ('Frodo was alive but taken by the enemy') at the end of volume two. Every few weeks the fans would go to Hatchards and ask if there was any sign of volume three. Eventually the assistant said that it was now on the horizon. 'But I can tell you this, I have seen advance proofs and I assure you everything turns out all right.'

Later still, my children had a kind aunt who gave them the Narnia books for Christmas and birthdays, as they appeared. I suppose all our battered copies are first editions. Then John Wain came to be our next door neighbour. But I knew him as the author of Hurry on Down and not as an Inkling. And, anyway, I was away so much because of my job that I never really got to know him well.

Do all these things qualify me? I am not sure. This book fulfils its purpose extremely well. It starts with six general essays which give you the history and background to the underlying thought that went on. And then there is an A to Z of people, books and background. Anyone wanting to know more about the Inklings will find this a great help. But where do you stop? Linkages abound, so one entry sends you to another to find out more.

So the book would serve as an excellent introduction as well as a source for those who already know a bit or a lot. My own problem is that the book makes you feel you ought to read Charles Williams who was obviously very important but I have already tried and failed to finish the course. As for theosophy I find it a strange heresy. I remember learning a poem in my youth: 'Its no go the Yogi Man, It's no go Blavatsky.' Madame Blavatsky is not mentioned in this book but I find her friend Steiner equally impenetrable.

I am sure I could not have coped with the Bird and Baby. I do not like beer much and tobacco not at all, and I certainly would not have dared even to intrude into the argument. The book does tell us that Dyson was 'Cool towards the Tolkien readings' but it does not nail the myth that it was Lewis and not Dyson who was memorably rude about the elves. But the meetings must have been fun. I enjoyed this book, I think Mary Gorton's cover is superb. In the style of the great posters of the period it evokes the 30s extremely well.

This is either a must for fans or a gift to a friend who wants to know a bit more about the Inklings when the film of The Lord of the Rings comes out.

John Marsh