Barfield (and Hooper) Come to the Wade

So, one of the things I found out about during my recent visit to the Wade is that they'll soon be hosting two special speakers: Owen Barfield ('Owen Jr', grandson of the author) and Walter Hooper.

Owen Jr.'s talk about his grandfather's life and works will be at the Wade tomorrow evening (Tuesday October 6th, at seven o'clock). I missed a similar talk in Oxford in 2007, having arrived from Heathrow just shortly before the event started and being too jet-lagged from transcontinental + transatlantic travel to take in a lecture that same evening. A bad call on my part, I've since concluded. Now I miss it again by just a week and a day. Ah well; someday. In the meantime, for anyone interested in the most overlooked of all the major Inklings, this is an event you shd take the extra effort to attend if at all possible.

Nor is that all: on the 26th -- that is, three weeks from today -- Fr. Hooper will be speaking about his forty-six years spent editing C. S. Lewis. I suspect this will be similar to the talk I got to hear him give on the same topic the last day I was in England (in fact, the evening that I shd have spent packing), wh. I enjoyed v. much. There aren't many people left who knew Lewis, and Hooper knows more about him than any other person living, so this shd be quite an event.

Here's the official announcement from the Wade Center website:

http://www.wheaton.edu/wadecenter/news/news.html

And for those who don't know enough about Barfield yet, here's the official website, which shows their progress so far in their welcome campaign to get all of OB's books back in print:*

http://www.owenbarfield.org/

--John R.

*my own two small recent contributions to Barfieldology are having provided the foreword to EAGER SPRING (having years ago provided the executors with a copy of the text itself) and writing a review of Simon Blaxland de Lange's biography of OB. I still long for the day when ENGLISH PEOPLE sees print, and still hope to get my essay on the Burgeon trilogy (THIS EVER DIVERSE PAIR, WORLDS APART, & UNANCESTRAL VOICE) written up and published ('The Importance of Being Burgeon'). --JDR