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.'
