Pints with Jack, Season 4, Episode 80.

After Hours with Dr. David Downing.

Welcome, everyone. Pints with Jack is your weekly CS Lois podcast, where Matt, Andrew and I

break down and discuss the works of CS Lewis.

This season, we've eavesdropped on the correspondence of Screwta tape and listened to his toast at the Temptors Training College.

But we're now in the middle of Narnia Month.

And in previous weeks, we've read and discussed the chronicle of this season, which was being the silver chair.

And today we're talking to a Narnia expert, a name which should be familiar to every Lewis fan,

co-director of the Wade Center and author of many Inklings-related books, Dr David Downing.

Dr. Downing has provided a critical introduction and over 400 explanatory notes to a new edition of Lewis's book, The Pilgrim's Regress.

He's also written four books related to Lewis, planets in peril, a critical study of the Ransom

Trilogy, The Most Reluctant Convert, an examination of Lewis's journey to faith, into

The Region of Orr, a study of how Lewis's wide reading and Christian mysticism enhanced his

own faith and enriched his imaginative writing, Looking for the King, a historical novel in which

two young Americans meet Lewis and Tolkien in Oxford

in 1940, and lastly, the book which we'll be discussing today, Into the Wardrobe, an in-depth

overview of the Chronicles of Narnia. Dr. Downing, welcome to Pints with Jack. Thank you. I'm happy

to join you. I'm honored to join you. This is going to be fun. I think it is. And I must say this has been a long time

coming to have you on the show, because I finished reading the final pages of your Lewis biography,

the Most reluctant convert, while I was sitting with my mother in the woods by Lewis's home

just prior to taking a tour of the kilns. And also, Matt and I met you briefly, you and your wife,

Crystal, at the symposium in Montreat a few years ago. Oh, was that right? Yeah, that was an

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