Featured Guests
Trusted experts and scholars from The Forge of Friendship
Owen A. Barfield
Owen A. Barfield is the grandson and trustee to Owen Barfield (1898–1997), who became known as the “first and last Inkling”— scholar, friend and creative contemporary of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
Janet Croft
Colin Duriez
Colin Duriez has taught, written and spoken worldwide on C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Inklings for nearly thirty years. His best-known books include The C. S. Lewis Encyclopedia, The Inklings Handbook, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, and A Field Guide to Narnia.
Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Ferguson is a Scottish–American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.
John Garth
Writer, editor and researcher John Garth is well known for his ongoing work on J.R.R. Tolkien’s life and creativity. In 2017 he became only the fourth winner of the Tolkien Society’s Outstanding Contribution Award. His first book, Tolkien and the Great War (2003), won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award.
Diana Pavlac Glyer
Diana Glyer is an award-winning writer whose research focuses on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. Her books The Company They Keep and Bandersnatch offer in-depth accounts of Lewis and Tolkien, their writing processes and the importance of their creative visions.
Malcolm Guite
Malcolm Guite is a chaplain, poet, singer-songwriter, and author of eight books, including What Do Christians Believe? and Sounding the Seasons. His interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, notably within the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.
Bruce Herman
Bruce Herman is an artist and lecturer who holds the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in the art department of Gordon College. His work has been exhibited around the world, and has paintings housed in the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art, the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, and the DeCordova Museum.
Walter Hooper
Walter Hooper served briefly in 1963 as C.S. Lewis’s private secretary when Lewis was in declining health. He devoted himself to Lewis’s memory after his death in November 1963, eventually taking up residence in Oxford, England, where he lived until his death. Hooper became a C.S. Lewis papers custodian, advocate, and editor of his works.
Simon Horobin
Simon Horobin is a British philologist and author and professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His major research interests are in the history of the English Language, especially in the Medieval period. He has lectured to a variety of audiences on C.S. Lewis and has published articles on Lewis’s scholarly writings.
Bruce R. Johnson
Bruce R. Johnson is a pastor, editor of The Undiscovered C. S. Lewis, and General Editor of Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal. He has lectured on Lewis in Britain and the U.S. and contributed essays on Lewis for various journals and books. The focus of his current research is the work of Lewis with RAF Chaplains during World War II.
Stuart Lee
Stuart D. Lee is a member of the English Faculty and Merton College, and Deputy CIO at the University of Oxford. His research and teaching focus on Old English, World War One literature, and the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien.
John Lennox
John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus), is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy and religion. He teaches at many academic institutions, is Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum and has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science and Christianity.
Jason Lepojärvi
President of the Oxford University C.S. Lewis Society, Jason Lepojärvi works as the C.S. Lewis Associate Professor of Theology and Literature at George Fox University in Oregon and serves as the Managing Editor of Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal.
Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath is a theologian, Anglican priest, historian, scientist, apologist, and intellectual. A faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, and The Dawkins Delusion?
Michael Ward
Michael Ward is an English literary critic and theologian. His academic focus is theological imagination, especially in the writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and G. K. Chesterton. He is best known for his book Planet Narnia. On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to him in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.