As in all the sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note.

Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows.

This is Pites with Jack, Season 7, Episode 35,

McDonald's Month. George's Music

After Hours with Dr. Amanda Vernon.

Welcome everyone, and here on Pints with Jack, we're reading our way to the works of C.S. Lewis.

But this month, we are reading his master, George MacDonald.

And we continue that today, and we are going to devote this episode to the question of

McDonald's relationship with music. And our guide through this particular slice of

McDonald's life, and his writing, is Dr. Amanda Vernon. Dr. Amanda Vernon completed an M.A. in English Literary

Studies at the University of Exeter, a diploma in theological studies at the University of Oxford,

and a BA in English Literature at the University of Buckingham. She completed her PhD at the

University of Lancaster, and her thesis was entitled Reading with the Trinity,

and looked at the relationship between theology and literary form in the work of George

MacDonald, examining the relationship between 19th century religious and literary culture,

while also demonstrating how McDonald's theological approach to literary criticism made him a

distinctive contributor to this emergent field.

Dr. Amanda Vernon, welcome to Pites for Jack.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

How's the weather in Oxford today?

It is pretty gray.

It's not raining, though, which I always see is, you know, the optimum, as long as it's not raining, then it's

...