It seemed as if by magic, but we were hardly out of the Jericho district, just starting to head towards the centre of Oxford, when my friend excitedly spotted the Inklings pub above, shortly after passing the church below:
Unfortunately, the pub, also nicknamed The Bird and Baby, has been shut since the Covid shutdown, so we couldn't go inside:
The pub is said to date back to 1650.
My friend was excited at seeing the pub because he'd recently read a book about the Inklings (Oxford writers' group), and is a big fan of C.S. Lewis.
Of course, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are commonly recognised as being the two spearheads of the Inklings group.
Have just read that alongside the Inklings having had formal meetings at Oxford University College sites, they had had informal lunchtime meetings at The Eagle and Child from the 1930s up to the early 1960s, with Tolkien drifting away in the late 1950s, and Lewis' association being ended upon his death in 1963.
In 2019, I finally got round to reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and loved the Catholic symbolism throughout the novel (Gandalf = God the Father; Aragorn = Christ; the elves = angels; the bread that the elves give to the hobbits = holy communion etc.).
Must really get round to reading some C.S. Lewis though, because every Traditional Catholic/Christian writer that I read quotes him and holds him in such high regard.
Did read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe during childhood, but that was so long ago now.
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