Now there were ancient writers about Druids Roman Caesars had something to say about the Druids of Gaul. They are almost unknown from historical sources, and almost equally inaccessible to archaeological knowing: one source, cited in the Wikipedia article, says, 'not one single artefact or image has been unearthed that can undoubtedly be connected with the ancient Druids.' Almost everything we reliably know about them could be written on one half of a sheet of paper. And something, in a perverse way, is true for ancient Druids.

And in the end I arrived at inspiration for something to write, albeit not something I either welcomed or envisioned.Ī physics teacher or show, I don't remember which, said that the Holy Grail of physics would be a so-called 'Grand Unified Theory', which would essentially mean that everything we know about physics could be boiled down to a set of equations that could be written on one half of a side of a sheet of paper. Partway through I imagined a work consisting entirely of questions about how Druidry is envisioned in That Hideous Strength.

Lewis, That Hideous Strength, in the hope that it would inspire something for me to write. Having finally gotten around to finding what to do with free time after some generous time off from holidays and recuperating from sickness (my job and my boss are really good), I reread C.S. For a long time I have considered it the deepest of his fiction.īut I here write another Pilgrimage from Narnia. That Hideous Strength corresponds to The Abolition of Man, at much greater length, and is expressed through masterful fiction instead of the prose argument of The Abolition of Man. The Abolition of Man is a short book and is my favorite among Lewis's nonfiction writing.

I still respect Lewis, but the Orthodox Church has a great many treasures and some of them are not even hinted at when he presents standard Christianity. I have been told that I write like an Englishman if that is true, it is much more probably Lewis's influence than anyone else.Īnd, as Orthodox, I have written A Pilgrimage from Narnia and backed away from Lewis's objective of 'mere Christianity'. I've read 'Dymer' and The Discarded Image and am aware of one and only one major work of Lewis's that I have not read, a textbook that to my knowledge has not been superseded. I write as someone who grew up first having my father read The Chronicles of Narnia to my brother and me at bedtime (my Mom recounted how Matthew and I were wide awake even when my father was nodding off), then reading The Chronicles of Narnia again and again, and eventually reading practically every essay, book, and story of Lewis's that I could get my hands on.

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis