Imagine that you are a resident of Oxford in the 1930s and 1940s. And let's say that one of your regular pub stops is the Eagle and Child, a reasonable proposition if you like pubs in Oxford, though I find it a bit too cramped and oddly laid out. But no matter. Odds are that in your perambulations you'd occasionally run into the Inklings, an informal group of writers that included JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, who whiled away hours at the pub often referred to as "The Bird and the Baby" after their somewhat more formal gab sessions about their work and writing generally. The latest Times Literary Supplement has a review of Diana Pavlak Glyer's The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community which explores this remarkable ferment of talent and socializing.
4 comments:
I've also heard it referred to as "The Fowl and the Foetus." I can't say I've ever had the impression of great minds collecting there when I have visited - and there's no Betty Stoggs.
RoJo --
We never spent much, if any time there. The allure of the Lamb & Flag and its tasty Betty Stoggs across St. Giles was always too strong. Mmmmm, Betty Stoggs!
dcat
No doubt the Lamb and Flag will get its due mention in the book, fifty years hence, about the intellectual cauldron that was the Armitage Shanks. Maybe we'll get some sort of plaque, too.
Undoubtedly -- right above the urinal. (Or as you Brits would have it, you-rye-nul.)
dcat
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