Oxford town

We spent a day in Oxford between York and London, about ten days ago (I am still catching up on blogging about that trip.)

It was great fun, starting with a nice restaurant on the side of the Thames where we had lunch and watched people who had rented punts trying to make them work.


We walked all around town, looking in on a couple of the more famous traditional colleges. Here is Christchurch College.














And here is a courtyard at Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis was on the faculty. Sandy and I are both long time fans of many of his books, particularly the Narnia series (despite the less than stellar movies). Sandy in particular attributes much of her childhood sense of morality to ideas from the Narnia books. I only encountered them as an adult, but I still like them.




Here is the River Cherwell seen from Addison's walk, in back of Magdalen College, where J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson reputedly convinced C.S. Lewis to become a Christian at 3 a.m. on September 20, 1931.

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was very magical for both Sandy and me as teenagers. I was wowed by the breadth of the saga, the heroism and goodness of the main characters. Very inspiring stuff. I can't really say that either Tolkien or Lewis directly affected my own evolving sense of morality or my decision as a late teenager to really embrace the Mormon Christianity I had grown up with. But it has been fascinating to learn about how these men thought it through for themselves and talked about it.















On that same theme, here is the pub where Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson used to meet: The Eagle and Child, sometimes known as the Bird and the Baby.















And here is a picture of Sandy and Chris inside the pub.