The Return of the Epic: Malcolm Guite and Arthurian Legends

[00:00:00]See through the surface roundabout. The noise, the rush, the fear, the doubt.

[00:00:07]Though modern Britain lies without, fair logres lives within. Welcome to classical etc. You're in the studio with Memorialia Press.

[00:00:18]Welcome to classical etc. I am Paul Schaefer and I'm here with Martin Cthine, Tanya Charlton, and our special guest Malcolm Gite. Now, Malcolm's here for our Memorial National Conference and uh he is the winner of the Parnasses Prize this year for his book Galahad and the Grail. Now, in the conversation I had with Malcolm last night, um I I I think I walked away thinking this man is Anglican priest and poet, and your life's work has really been bringing those two things together.

[00:00:54]>> Yeah. Am I Am I right on that?

[00:00:55]>> Yes, I think I think that's true. I mean, they are they're twin vocations if you like. I mean, I experienced the vocation to poetry first and to priesthood and there was a period where I thought they were pulling against each other and I wondered, you know, if I took time for poetry, you know, I wrote a sneak sneaky sonnet on a Sunday afternoon, you know, I was kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul. But uh academically I was beginning to realize we really needed to to make the case for a recovery of of a baptized imagination as at least potentially a truthbearing faculty and for poetry as a way of knowing. I was learning that particularly from Cridge and of course in the end the blindingly obvious I should have seen it be I realized that I had this great exampler in George Herbert and the more deeply I looked at George Herbert's holding together of priesthood and poetry and those two invocations and the more I saw if you like the psychedel nature of his poetry um and actually the poetic nature of the way he he handled his vocation of priesthood. I I realized effectively for me at least as for him um these are kind of two sides of the same coin >> and well and I think that leads us into really the conversation we we're going to have about Galahad and the Grail. But I don't think this would be classical etc if we don't actually talk about first >> what we're reading and I know Malcolm you you uh were already accosted at our conference to be asked what you were reading. Yeah.

[00:02:26]>> Would you mind sharing that with with our listeners?

[00:02:28]>> Uh, right. Gosh. Well, um, >> I have to say, well, I've just been on holiday, which is lovely. Holiday reading always involves some classic detective fiction from >> I'm a great Dorothy ses person, so I I'll reread any of the Lord Peters, too.

[00:02:43]>> In fact, I've what I picked up just on a secondhand bookstore uh to take away with me on holiday was an old paperback of of the sign of four. I was back into kind of Conan Doyle. Um, on a more sort of serious level, I I love literary biography, though literary biographies never tell me what I really want to know, which is exactly when these people wrote and under what kind of pain and, you know, I want I want the juicy details about writing. I'm not particularly interested in the juicy details about their complicated love lives. I want to know what happened in the writing, you know, but um there are some very good literature and I've just I think, you know, Richard Holmes although I I came to have differences and you know push back when I wrote my own big book on Cridge I know and he's written a good two volume he's never a very fine writer and he's turned his attention most recently to Tennyson and he's just written a book uh called the boundless deep about the young Tennyson >> and particularly his engagement with science and the three-way conversation that's going on in Tennyson's heart and mind between faith, science and poetry.

[00:03:55]>> Uh so I just I devoured that. I I was also reading a a life of Edward Fitzgerald the the um translator of the Rubier of Omar Cayam which had a massive you know 19th century literary influence and he's a friend of I mean it's extraordinary. I I I like writing about these great Victorians. I I like reading about these great Victorians rather because it was an extraordinary moment in society. So in that there's a period where you basically have Carlile Dickenser Tennyson and Fitzgerald all in and out of each other's houses and writing to each other of the of all of them. I mean Fitzgerald's the least wellknown but the greatest letter writer >> and so you get a huge amount about their life in in in his letters. But but I grew up with the um with the rubat um in the sense that my mother just knew it and quoted it endlessly, you know. Um if ever anything uh was going wrong, you know, my my mother would say, "Ah, love, could thou and I with fate conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire? Would we not shatter it to bits and then remold it closer to the heart's desire?

[00:05:13]and he just had that stuff and you know uh and it I mean people don't read as much as as they did and obviously at the time I mean you know it bombed as though it's he did this thing he he he learned Persian he loved it he wrote this thing and it was just remained you know and I think it was um um was one of the prereelites uh uh Dante Gabriel Rossetti I think who found it in a sort of used bookstore >> and took it to Rusky you know, they all went, "Oh my goodness." You know, and then it became a thing, you know.

[00:05:47]>> Yeah.

[00:05:48]>> They had remainders back then. I >> Yeah.

[00:05:51]>> Uh Martin, what are you reading?

[00:05:53]>> Well, Malcolm mentioned classic detective fiction, and of course, as an American, I'm thinking Raymond Chandler.

[00:06:00]>> No.

[00:06:00]>> Oh, I actually I'm in the middle of Farewell, My Lovely. Um, right. But uh I'll I'll uh uh say as I did uh for a session we did here earlier this week.

[00:06:12]Uh I just finished Dominion by Tom Holland. That's great.

[00:06:15]>> Yeah. You like that?

[00:06:16]>> Yeah. Know I'm Yeah. I Yeah. I think that's a really certainly in in England.

[00:06:20]I think that's a book that's genuinely nudged the culture.

[00:06:26]>> Well, I wondered. No, I think a lot of people are, you know, it's given a lot of confidence to to some sort of Christians in the public square, >> but it's also made a lot of people who assumed that they were died in the wall completely secularist >> to realize where some of their best ideas came from.

[00:06:44]>> Oh, right.

[00:06:46]>> Because he's sort of telling a chronological story in a way of the history of Christianity, but he's he's at all times pulling in from other eras.

[00:06:53]is I mean and he's talking uh about everything from the Crusades to the Beatles.

[00:06:58]>> Yeah. I know he's it's extraordin I mean he's got an extraordinary range of references but he himself has I think been very much on a journey you know closer.

[00:07:06]>> Yeah I've heard that. I've heard and and so I I got I finished it you know I was expecting it to be a history book and it is but I got done with it and I thought this is a great book of Christian apologetics. It is essentially. Yeah.

[00:07:20]And it's apologetics in the best sense that it it's >> one of the things it's doing is removing obstacles to faith. It's kind of clearing the ground.

[00:07:30]>> Mhm.

[00:07:31]>> Um it's not by any stretch of the imagination a proitizing book, >> but it nevertheless says something of absolutely central significance happened in the Christ event. Yes.

[00:07:45]>> Which has changed everything forever.

[00:07:47]And that's >> and he's not writing that as a person of conviction just saying as a historian >> look what happens.

[00:07:54]>> Mhm. Yeah.

[00:07:55]>> Right. Right.

[00:07:56]>> Because it's truth.

[00:07:58]>> Yeah.

[00:07:58]>> Yeah. Exactly.

[00:07:59]>> And then I'm reading a book on the influence of Robinson Crusoe.

[00:08:03]>> Oh, right. Is that the name of it?

[00:08:06]>> Uh no, that's not and I I I'm trying to remember the name of it. uh but uh just just how how much that book worked its way into and it was really kind of I don't know if you call it the first not a novel really um but just extremely influential and how it how it influenced other literature and later later on English literature so it's very good >> da >> well I needed something light this week and a podcast listener recommended because she knew I was a big Agatha Christie fan so she recommended a book that Agatha Christie wrote wrote not as Agatha Christie but under a pseudonym I can't remember the pseudonym now but apparently she wrote six narrative stories that are not defect detective fiction and this one is about this woman that is in the she's stuck in the desert going between Baghdad and London in the 30s and she's having to she doesn't she's read all the books she's got she's all alone except for the people that own the little rest home she's in. And she doesn't have anything to do. And so she is contemplating her life for days. Like that's all she's got is her mind. And she and she's realizing some really I think you know huge mistakes that she's made. And she's she was one of these people that you know had the perfect life, built the perfect life for herself. and she's starting to to actually realize by just being still all of the things that are were not perfect in her life.

[00:09:44]>> Well, your life's a story and it's easier to see it as a story the closer to the end you get, I think.

[00:09:50]>> Yeah. Well, yeah. Yes. Her children are grown. She's probably in her 40s. But, >> um, Agatha Christie is just I just like her pros. I like, you know, as soon as I started, I think, you know, I feel at home with her writing.

[00:10:07]>> Um, well, I am on a very different track than all of you all. Last night, I was recommended to read Death of a Pig by Eie White.

[00:10:18]>> And you did have your pig tie on.

[00:10:20]>> Yeah, I had my pig tie on. So, it brought up the conversation. It's a four-page essay that I read. I I went home last night and as I'm laying in bed, I started reading this, finished it this morning and it's just delightful.

[00:10:31]>> All right.

[00:10:32]>> It's, you know, but it's also it's the struggle of a farmer who is trying to raise an animal to eat it >> and he talks about like I'm raising it to murder it, but then he but then when it gets sick and all of the effort he puts into trying to save this animal.

[00:10:49]>> Yeah. Um, and it's it's but he his writing I don't his writing was very it was very very good.

[00:10:55]>> Well, it's impressive even in Charlotte's Web. I mean, you know, >> Lee loves Eie White's essays.

[00:11:01]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:02]>> I didn't I didn't know those essays existed. I only >> there's a book of >> he was a writer for the New Yorker. I think >> this was published in the Atlantic. But yeah, I think >> I I've become a sort of saver of of what used to be called in England the familiar essay. the essay that's speaking to you because I've ended up having to write lots. I write a weekly column for the Church Times on the back page called Poet's Corner, which is just very short. It's you know, five to 600 words reflections, but I've been doing it for about six years, so I have to keep saying, have I said this before, but it's it's trebled my appreciation of GK Chesterton because GK Tester had two or three of these things going on at the same time.

[00:11:41]>> Yes, but he needed an editor. fresh in fresh in all of them. But then you realize you go back there's you know the romantic this Hlett you know and and Dquincy and Charles Lamb and then of course the kind of granddaddies of them all. So behind them is is Johnson and the Rambler and then Addison and Steel and the Spectator and there's this tradition of the reflective essay.

[00:12:07]>> Mhm. And uh yeah, so so I I mean obviously when you mention all those names, you know, my little scribbles for the church times, you know, but if I need inspiration, I just need to go back. What can be done in a short essay?

[00:12:21]>> Mhm.

[00:12:21]>> I go back to those great masters.

[00:12:24]>> Yeah. Chesterton. I've I did uh a master of master of arts degree uh monograph on on Chesterton and uh and I collected him for many years. And there's so many of those little old >> clothbound volumes collection editions.

[00:12:42]Yeah.

[00:12:42]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:43]>> The um tremendous trifles I think is >> Oh yes, that's good. That's a good one.

[00:12:49]>> Mhm.

[00:12:49]>> And of course Bell is great.

[00:12:51]>> Yeah. Great. Great essay, isn't it?

[00:12:53]>> There's a collection of Bells called on Nothing and Kindred Subjects.

[00:13:00]>> I don't have that one.

[00:13:02]>> That's brilliant. Yeah. Well, and just the humor that comes I mean a lot of those great essayists are also very humorous. Um >> well let's let's talk about uh what you've written Malcolm and >> um I think first we should probably start off with your goal of the project right this is an Arthurium project.

[00:13:22]>> Yeah.

[00:13:22]>> This is only one Galahad and the Grail is only one of multiple volumes.

[00:13:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. It will be eventually um God willing and the people consenting on it will be four volumes. Uh though that's simply the physical volumes as they come out each volume it comprises of three books. So it's a 12 book I mean that's deliberate that's looking back to Milton and paralous lost and what would the fairy queen had Spencer lived to finish it would have been 12 books. Um so in a sense there's a tull of the cap to my epic predecessors there and it is in that sense an epic um though it's also probably best understood as a kind of ballad cycle. I mean I think the and obviously the ground my great predecessor in terms of doing a long ruriad is is Tennyson but in terms of the poetic form my I mean I wanted to do this I mean I actually first started write writing poetry about arthurian poetry when I was 17 >> in spyian stanzas are awful but you know full of queths and doths and pies I mean well you know But um you know I wasn't very good at it but I've wanted to do it but so I've always wanted to do this but I was puzzled about the form and the more I studied as it were particularly you know the high modernists who have various oblique Arthurian references. I mean the great high modernist who does it with David Jones. The more kind of daunted I was but also I was had I was uneasy. I was uneasy about the whole high modernist thing. the whole Joyic and Elliot Beckett project which seemed to me to be actually refusing meaning to your readers rather than offering it. It seemed to me there's a del there was something catery something you know um >> so I wanted you know Shakespeare and Dickens and Tennyson as as forebears in the sense that they're they're writing something profound and well worth reading but they're lucid they're attractive and they're genuinely popular >> and I didn't know the form and then I was staring him in the face so this was so important I kept not doing it you This is too important to do, you know, I can't. So, one of the things I did by while not doing this was to write a big study of of Cridge and specifically of the rhyme of the ancient mariner, >> my book Mariner that came out in 2017.

[00:16:00]And at that point it dawned on me and I was praising Cridge in this book for having taken the the the ballad form, a folk form, a common form, a naturally oral form, a form which is given to storytelling. But until Wsworth and Cridge took it up, people thought it was you know a bit crude and Cridge particularly in the mariner turned it into this extraordinarily delicate literary instrument.

[00:16:23]>> He could re the variations he plays on the form, the different ways he uses it.

[00:16:27]So I suddenly thought it's staring me in the face.

[00:16:29]>> Right. So the form owes a lot to the rhyme of the ancient manner. But the other great user of that form and varior of it is of course Chesterton's ballad of the white horse which was the last go I think you know that came out in 1911 and again that was very popular and it really conveyed a sense of Englishness to people. It was as close as we were getting. I mean talking rightly says that in a sense his legendarium was intended to be a kind of an English epic. Um but I thought it's time to do it again and this is if you like British rather than simply English cuz it's it's Wales.

[00:17:06]>> There's a listener who uh is not real familiar with poetry and particularly poetic form. How would you describe the ballad form? So the ballad form is um at its simplest is is it's a four line verse form and it it alternates four stress and three stress lines. So it is an ancient mariner. He stop one of three by thy long gray beard and glittering eye. Now wherefore stops thou me? It's cage or and then it'll have lots of in.

[00:17:37]So again, Cridge, the fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free. We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea. So that's where it is. But you can't if you're writing a long thing, you need to vary it in different ways. So one of the things that Cridge does is occasionally extend.

[00:17:56]So it rhyme. Normally ballads, which makes them easy to write, they rhyme A B C B. So it's the second and fourth that rhyme. But one of the things you can do and I do in this is to take that unrimed if you like that orphan C line. You're waiting for the punch of the line um the B sound to come back in but you delay it and you do a little run on C's and that's something Cish does occasionally but >> but Chester does a lot chest does a lot.

[00:18:27]So maybe the simp simplest thing also to would be to just read you a bit of the the prelude to this which introduces you both to what I'm trying to achieve and why I'm doing it but also to the form.

[00:18:39]Um so this is simply called um take up the tail. Um, and one of the other things that ballads do is they rather like blues, they have or like Homer for that matter, you know, where you have it's always the raisy finger dawn or you know um uh you or the wine dark sea. So there are certain set phrases in ballad form that everybody uses and many many many English and Scottish ballads begin with the line as I walked out one morning or I walked on a May morning. So that's where this starts to signify the thing it's part of. As I walked out one morning, all in the soft fine rain, it seemed as though a silver veil was shining over hill and veil, as though some lovely longlast spell had made all new again. So that sea rhyme, I've given it three. So um >> in some cases you've got >> sometimes it's longer. Yeah, >> it's five, six, seven.

[00:19:41]>> Yeah. Well, I I love it's partly do you know I feel like I'm making up for a day. I I lament the loss of rhyme and meter in English. I the thing that made me want to be a poet was reading Keats >> and what I could hear in Keats was the sheer delicious melody of the sound and not just the rhymes but the >> the asinance. I mean the the line of Keats that suddenly oh my goodness what's that >> uh is in Ode to Nightingale when he starts with this very der you know I'm nothing's happening here you know my heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my senses the but then he hears the nighting girl and he says um it is not through envy of thy happy lot but being too happy in thine happiness and here it comes that thou lightwinged dry of the trees In some melodious plot of beach and green and shadows numberless singest of summer in fullthroated ease, >> you know, and like you've done that melodious plot of beach and where did that come from?

[00:20:47]>> You've managed to do that.

[00:20:49]>> So I'm trying to recover that sound, that lost sound. I want it to be.

[00:20:53]>> It is melodic.

[00:20:54]>> Yeah. Well, thank you.

[00:20:55]>> We've all said we have to read it out loud.

[00:20:59]find ourselves reading.

[00:21:00]>> So I put a little note at the beginning um note from the poet. I say this poem is written in the ringing singing rhythmic form of the English ballad.

[00:21:09]Ballads were made to be sung or chanted out loud long before they're overwritten down. It's when read aloud that a ballad comes to life. So I suggest the best experience of this poem is to be had.

[00:21:19]>> And I love the way you end it. Read each stave as though you were yourself telling the story around a campfire.

[00:21:24]Yeah.

[00:21:25]>> And above all enjoy it.

[00:21:27]>> Yeah. Well, and and I when I read this, I started actually just reading it uh to myself and then I went and got your audio version going back and forth actually was helpful cuz I found myself not sitting around a campfire. I wish I was sitting around a campfire listening to it cuz I could have focused fully on it, >> but I was listening to it as maybe I was driving and things and I was missing things. And I know that there's symbolism that I was getting when I read it that I wasn't getting as I listened to it because I wasn't fully listening to it. But fully listening to it was or just listen to it at all was actually more enjoyable than sitting down and reading it.

[00:22:04]>> Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And you when we talked in Lexington a few months back when you were at the Lewis house, >> I asked you I said I said why does this remind me of Chesterton? And you explained that Cridge had those those middle lines. Is there a word for those those repeating middle lines? Would you just Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:25]>> Um but you said well Cridge kind of increased the number of those and then I think this is what you said and then then Chesterton sort of turbocharged.

[00:22:34]>> Yeah. Took took it and ran with it.

[00:22:36]Yeah. But the thing about rhyme I mean a couple things. First of all I think that as I say I'm making up for lost time. I think English poets have stopped doing it. I mean the last well I mean Chester is probably one of the last >> and um I think I mean this may sound slightly old but you know if I my I use the language of the muse and if I have a I mean every artist loves their medium in my case it's the English language and the English language herself is my muse >> and in a kind of strange way I feel like it gives her pleasure to be rhymed >> like like that's makes her per she's waiting for this to happen and she's saying look all these these modern poets they, you know, they can't manage it. And I say, "See me tonight in my heart.

[00:23:18]Have I got rhymes for you? You know, you're going to love this." But it is, it's really, you know, so so funny enough, I mean, here we are in America.

[00:23:26]I mean, you know, I would say in I I Dylan is one of the great poets and he's got a description of rhyme.

[00:23:35]>> Mhm.

[00:23:36]>> In Tambourine Man, which I think one of his most perfect pieces. And when he says what using exactly this he says if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme to your tambourine in time I wouldn't pay it any mind it's just a ragged cloud behind it's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing you what >> okay >> and it's these vague traces but why why is that why is that important you know saying he's like I wouldn't pay it any mind I don't think so I mean this is really changing your mind and I think it goes back to I mean one of the things that's right at the heart of this is the notion of re-enchantment the notion that we we're living in the imminent frame we're living in you know disenchantment max way was the person who first used that to describe the kind of modern industrial world now I think the word re-enchantment is problematic I think it presupposes that the world is actually disenchanted and also has the presump has the presump the presumption that we have the power to reenchant it I don't think that's the case I don't I think the world is still as an enchant Ed as ever it was. I mean what we have to do is not so much re-enchant the world as und disenchant ourselves.

[00:24:44]>> Unveil it.

[00:24:45]>> Yeah. Unveil it. Lifting the veil is really crucial image in this. Obviously the whole poem the climax of it is the lifting of the veil. And when the lifting of the veil over the chalice happens the other veil is lifted. Um so that's that's a crucial thing. But to go back to this word enchantment the point about the word enchantment is that it contains the word chant.

[00:25:06]>> That's the point. just just like incantation you know is is canto I sing you know uh I mean let's go back to Virgil Amorum verumquay cano there has to be a singing line and a chanting line to actually slightly change your mode of consciousness >> the poetry itself just by being poetry lifts the veil a little that's what Cridge said he said the purpose of poetry is to remove the film of familiarity which our selfishness and solicitude is cast over the world. The world is as wondrous as it ever was. You know, >> another big theme in prochester, >> the world is charged with the grandeur of God as as Hopkins says, you know.

[00:25:48]>> Well, oh, sorry.

[00:25:49]>> Oh, go ahead, Tanya.

[00:25:50]>> I just was going to I just can't imagine doing this. I can't imagine how I mean are you just like awake in the middle of the night thinking what rhymes with this or how do I get luckily as I say I've got a lot of poet you know I've got the rhythms particularly these kinds of >> you know what you wanted to do but finding those words >> I mean my mother would recite the rhyme of the ancient marriage to me I mean well I was kind of semihomeschooled and I didn't get to an actual school with other kids until I was maybe seven or eight and I you know made a new friend and I I remember saying to him you know That thing when your mom recites the rhyme of the ancient, do you like that?

[00:26:27]I love that because like I know it's not going to be bedtime, but he's going like what thing like I just thought that was a mama thing, you know?

[00:26:36]You know, so no, how does it work? So a lot of it starts I mean when I that verse I walked out one morning and then I seemed to hear something that literally I mean people think I'm being metaphorical there but I'm not. A lot of my poetry starts and my walks. I try to walk three times a day. My walks are the time for both poetry and prayer.

[00:27:00]>> So often the lines come to me and it used to be I mean some Tennyson could walk out and compose 50 lines and just come back and write them down. Oh man, >> you know I can't do that. But I could retain I mean I could you know back in the day when I was really working on Sundays I could really probably compose a sonet in my mind. But I get verses of this >> and um I either jot them down or now, you know, if I have a phone, I'll just record it.

[00:27:25]>> Oh, >> and then but it starts on the tongue >> and possibly scribble down. I do travel with a little notebook in a satchel. So I'll sit down on a bench on my walk and just write. But then I bring it back to my little writing hut or my my study upstairs depending on the weather and um you know I'll sort of light up a pipe and I I have a manuscript book. The whole of this and indeed the one has been written out originally with a fountain pen, you know, on >> blank online paper on it. And often, I mean, at the beginning when I was really working on getting the form right, I would just use the left hand page for the first draft and leave the right hand page for the extra lines and the crossings in.

[00:28:10]Now I'm confident enough to actually compose on both pages, >> but I've got space therefore to so then eventually it gets transcribed, you know, onto a onto a computer and even in the act of doing that, I'm revising it.

[00:28:23]>> But I can't do the final revisions on a screen. I just can't do it. I'm not a digital native. So after I've done, you know, 20 or 30 stanzas, which I've then transcribed, I print it out.

[00:28:34]>> Yes. Yes. And I go back to the same little hut that I wrote it down with and I make ink amendations. And often there's a word that's been waiting and I've used a a holder, a filler, you know, that's not I know that's not quite right. I know that the word herself will come soon and tell me, you know, write me. And um >> and that's another question I have is to exactly that which is >> that you know you you see poems sometimes and there are and they're uh they're rhyming in some way and you look at your you look at the word and you're you're thinking that's not really exactly the right word in terms of its meaning. the poet put it there because the rhyme but you read you read this book and it's not only it not only rhymes it's exactly the right word and I just how does somebody that >> I mean yeah I mean obviously in one I could sense I can answer by saying I've had a long apprenticeship >> like I started writing this if you like badly almost 50 years ago like I'm 68 now 17 so I read a lot >> which is important I've memorized a lot. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what I what I've memorized. It just it's in there. Uh but you kind of have to I mean when I was first you know under the Keats influence I was longing for those beautiful sounds but I was also gushing a lot and I was it was full of hyperbole and as I say it was kind of cloths and doths and privies and I I I mean I spent earlier on I mean I was obviously you start as a poet you're a want to be poet you eventually have to figure out what this is. But I started off saying like, why was I not born in the 1790s? Like, how was I not a young companion of Keats and Shelly? And so I wrote as though I were, >> right?

[00:30:32]>> I wrote and I just rejected the age I was in. And so I was just pretending to be that when I learned useful stuff. I learned, you know, I learned some chops, you know, but at first I was like listening to Keats, you know, as I say, I was I was like like the kid at the back of an Eric Clapton concert playing air guitar. like I don't even know what this is but I'm trying to move my fingers like that. And then later on when I discovered the metaphysical poets and you know uh Dunn and Herbert in particular became really again I was going like how come I wasn't one of them and again I was writing rather in their manner and none of that poetry that I wrote there is publishable it's derivative it's imitative but it's also it's inauthentic in the sense that I'm not writing as a person now to people Now that doesn't mean I want don't want to draw on the past. I absolutely want to I mean I think we've lost stuff we need to recover. But event one one of my collections of poetry is called this second one I of lyric poetry is called the singing bowl and um it opens with a poem called singing bowl which is kind of the muse speaking to me and it's the piece of advice I I needed you know when I was 16 and had to wait in my 50s to really understand. So the poem that poem begins, begin the song exactly where you are.

[00:31:56]>> Remain within the world of which you're made. Call nothing common in the earth or air. Accept it all and let it be for good. Start with the very breath you breathe in now. This moment's path, this rhythm in your blood. So you have to be authentically in the world. Doesn't mean you're happy with the world you're in.

[00:32:16]doesn't mean that you don't want changes and transformations and you don't want to call people to a kind of awakening to what they've lost, but you have to be where they are. So, so that same prelude is is as I said is set, you know, in the present and the present task. So, one of the things that influenced me very strongly in terms of certainly the way the inklings Harry handled our was at the end of that hideous strength. I mean that hit your strength there is still a pen dragon you know ransom and there is Merlin is revived but towards the end after they've kind of after the there's a conversation between two of the characters about what >> what Lewis calls a good haunting he says something we may call Britain has always been haunted by something we may call log that was the Welsh name for the for the kingdom of Arthur we've heard better than we can do but we can't quite forget it and we need to remember it every so often so there's a bit in the where the muse is speaking to me and telling me finally guy you've left it incredibly late you're in your 60s you know you you need to do this >> but then how do I do it and um so it's all take up the tale tell all this there's a long list of what I need to write and then it says you know lift up your eyes to see the light on Glastonbury tour then come down from that far green hill to where the sacred waters spill and shine within the chalice well and Listen to their law.

[00:33:44]And then this is the kind of key verse.

[00:33:46]Yay. Listen well before you start. Be still where you begin.

[00:33:53]See through the surface roundabout. The noise, the rush, the fear, the doubt.

[00:33:59]Though modern Britain lies without, fair lres lives within. You may yet walk through a by a thorn. The ancient hills do not forget. and you might wake their wisdom yet. Who knows what wonders might be met on this midsummer mourn. So that's placing me the poet right here in the 21st century.

[00:34:23]>> But with progress in your heart.

[00:34:25]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:34:26]>> Did your mother like the Arthurian ledger legend?

[00:34:30]>> Oh, totally. She told me these stories first. Yeah, absolutely. And um she told them she was an amazingly um she was a very intelligent and very widely read woman.

[00:34:42]And I realized I realized afterwards when I came to university and picked up Mallerie for the first time myself and began to read, >> you know, you know, in high middle English, you know, what Caxton had printed that there were whole passages in there that my mother had been more or less quoting. I mean she but she she didn't give me a kind of sanitized version of it you know so I mean the most you know the thing that was most memorable for me I mean I I was her account of the dollar stroke and the coming of the wasteland you know which you often don't get told at all >> right >> and it's the only thing that makes sense of the grail you know the grail is to heal the king and in healing the king to heal the land >> right >> uh and uh I remember being you know shocked um when she told me the story of how Balin Rashley, you know, even though the voices are telling him, you know, come no further, man of blood, and he finds him well his way into the Holy of Holies. And he and he's in fear. He's being pursued by Pelis. He's looking for a weapon. And, you know, he he sees the spear of Longinus hanging in the air above the above the grail and the drops of blood falling and oh, mom, no, don't tell me what it rushes forward and seizes it. And at that moment as he wounds the fisher king the whole land is laid waste and I'm I'm going but mommy he didn't know you know >> right >> so I remember being really so she was really full about the whole you know when they they lie three days and three nights you know on with >> Balin and the the king he's wounded and and the gra itself and the spear you know and then on the third day you know Merlin comes and moves the stones and Merlin tells him that because he's done this this is the dollar blow He brought this wasteland about. I remember stopping my mom. I said, "But mom, like that's like how could there even be a world where one rash man does this thing and like what about all the pe, you know, all the she was telling me the crops died in the field and the fish flow to the job on the river and and the cows couldn't bear calves and people couldn't bear children and you know completely in so like how could like there be a world where that could even happen?" And at that point, I mean, I was about 8, you know, this was like 64, maybe 65. And my mother looks at me and says, "Well, I'm telling you this story, Malcolm, because you need to know you live in just such a perilous world."

[00:37:05]>> Wow.

[00:37:06]>> And this was just after the Cuban missile crisis and the fears of a nuclear winter and, you know, so, oh my goodness. You know, but then she says, you know, she said, I mean, it's amazing. It's just really strange if you're a kid and you think about your origins and you know she says you know your father and I had to really talk and and pray together and to think is it right to bring children into into such a world and and you know but we did so in hope and then she goes back to the story and she says you know after all these devastating things that that Merlin tells Bon about what he's done and that he's going to have to ride for 3 days and everybody's going to come to their doors and curse him because he did this. She says, "But he did not ride on without hope because and then she tells me this bit of the story because Merlin said to him, "One day the gra will come and he will undo what you've done. You know where you came rashly and with a spirit of vengeance, he will come reverent into the chapel. You know where you ignored the grail. He will celebrate it for what it is." And then he will with the very same spear which w with which you wounded the king and laid the land. He will take that and because it is the blood of Christ on the spear drops from the spear that wounded him will heal him. And when the fisher king is healed the the the land will be healed. You know >> he knows that before he goes out. And I mean I you can imagine like I but I mean yeah obviously I didn't forget it. I'm telling you about it now.

[00:38:36]But one of the things I learned there was that this story knows things >> that I don't know. Like however long ago it was written, it already knows about what we were facing there. And later when I was looking at the ecological of the wasteland and then finally as an academic when I was looking at the the whole problem of disenchantment the whole problem of of of this this reductivism I mean Lewis was once asked what's the sum of all your writing says it's against reductivism you know that is a kind of wasteland that we've been living in a moral and intellectual wasteland and that again that needs healing and this story is about but you know finally of course eventually I I I returned to my Christian faith as a young man. I mean having having lost it for a while when I came back to that I became aware I was reading you know Milton this time as a believer rather than me as a student and you know you think paradise lost you a plot giveaway in the two but you know you don't get to the moment of Eve reaching for the apple until until book nine but when she does you know so saying you and Eve in evil hour rash hand reached he doesn't say like the first thing at that moment of the fall of mankind he doesn't say you know and so this individual woman committed a pecadillo and it'll be all right with therapy I mean what he actually what what he actually says the very first thing he says is earth felt the wound >> and nature sighing out through all her works gave sign that all was lost so I grasp that this was this isn't just a private sorry humanity this is a cosmic story and of course later on I came to read Romans more seriously and I realized you know that the creation was subjected to futility but in hope and the whole creation waits with eager longing and oh my god this is the waste and of course the professors when I was studying this in the 70s were all saying oh you know this is really pre-Christian pagan stuff and it's just been given a light Christian gloss but we can remove that you know and >> well I mean probably there are fertility rituals and kings wedded to land and there's the idea of the dying king and the rising certainly speaks about winter and spring, but then winter and spring speak about that for a reason, you know, because they're so so I began to realize that these stories were taking the old things, bringing them to the light of Christ, and they were suddenly finding their fulfillment. And then I looked around at who's telling the story now, and all of that is absent. So that made me think, okay, like maybe my mother prepared me for this. Maybe I'm the guy that and I didn't see myself as as giving a personal interpretation or I'm restoring something. I'm taking all the, >> you know, I'm painting back in what was deliberately painted out over the last couple of hundred years and saying, "Now look at it."

[00:41:33]>> And I'm glad you dedicated it to her. Oh yeah.

[00:41:36]>> Because if you hadn't right now, I'd say you should have dedicated to it. Yeah. Yeah, >> but talking about other people telling stories in your appendis in one of your appendices, you mentioned Martin Shaw >> and and I I actually kept this quote. I wanted to bring this up because you say Shaw is someone who like me seeks to break us out of the reductive materialism, the imminent frame that's been imprisoning us since the Enlightenment and through the power of story and myth to reawaken our sense of wonder. And in this sense, he represents a continuation of the romantic resistance to the dead hand of reductive scientism.

[00:42:13]>> Yeah.

[00:42:13]>> And I just thought when you're talking about right like the the whole earth that is wounded by the wound of the Fisher King, right?

[00:42:21]>> We we have we have told ourselves this story that that the world is nothing more than material. It's just stuff.

[00:42:30]>> This is I mean I mean Deart is at fault here. I think I mean brilliant as Decart is in many respects.

[00:42:35]to take only two categories and say there's either res cogitans or res extensor and all the cojutans were well I mean to be fair on deart he thought there were three categories of of conscious or thinking stuff which was the human mind angels and god but of course but then he he evacuates matter entirely of all of that it's just dead stuff res extensor you know I mean real estate really but you know He um >> brute facts.

[00:43:06]>> Yeah. The fact is of course that his followers thought well we can we can dispense with God and the angels and then now they're working on dispensing with even the mind you know. So but uh so that was a false view. It seemed to me it was a false split a false dichotomy and and this is not dead stuff out there. we need to recover are kind of mutually courtes and it's unsurprising therefore that you know sensitive and and uh you know spiritually gifted people like Martin Shaw are on to that >> mhm >> but I mean here's a Martin Shaw story I mean I was aware of Martin Shaw as a reteller particularly of the story of Parival but I was also aware of him as somebody who's kind of inherited the mantle of Robert Bllye and he ran the kind of white goddess festival and I saw him as essentially a neo neopagan. Now, at this point, I was thinking I probably got more in common with the neopagans than I have with the mere materialists, >> but paganism needs to hear the gospel.

[00:44:04]And I was anxious that the only people who were who were not reducing the artherad to kind of fisty cuffs were the neopagans. And I was basically going trying to write a book that said guys actually when the pagan story the whole point about the telling of the medieval tellings was to bring that stuff to Christ and then make realize oh Christ makes sense of this. That's so at the time I wrote this I was thinking and I started reading bits of it on my YouTube. I literally thought boy am I going to be in trouble with Martin Shaw.

[00:44:39]But I was hoping as it were to write it so sympathetically that I might begin you know as a work of apology I might begin to convert the Martin Shores of this world. So lo and behold, I get an email. This is way before, you know, I even had the project. I get an email from Martin Shaw. And I thought, okay, this is it. You know, I sort of put on the pads now. But and he says, Malcolm, I love this. Keep going. And I particularly love the way you're telling doing the storytelling.

[00:45:06]Now, I think he's one of the great storytellers of our age. And I that was my problem. I thought I know how to write a song, but I do. Do I know how to tell a story? So, I was very encouraged.

[00:45:14]At the end of his email, I said, "Come and see me." And it so happened he lives right down in de this kind of remote cottage as you can imagine on the edge of Dartmore and he leads these men's retreats out and they all go out and sort of you know live in tents and bivowettes and you know stand out and let the stars you know go through kind of liinal space rituals you know and um she come and see me and I was supposed to be actually leading a retreat. It was right at the beginning of Lent and um the retreat I was leading was for mainly retired priests and uh there was a massive storm blew up from from the southwest and just as I was starting this thing the power went down and all the fridges and everything went off and they had to cancel the retreat cuz you know food wouldn't be safe and I had arranged at the end of the retreat I couple of days later to go and see Martin. So I called him up and said actually I could come now if you happen to be free. He said please do. So I thought, you know, what's this? What's going to happen here? And I I bought this sort of propitiary bottle of of open 14-year-old mold to kind of hold in between. And it was extraordinary cuz I showed up and um you know, it was it was a beautiful lowbilt cottage with a with a thatched roof in a little pum as they call them in Devon with the river dot.

[00:46:29]It's actually Ted Hughes used to live in that cottage at one point, the poet where he used to go fishing. So, and it was like kind of going to see Baleon because I kind of knocked on the door and there was no light, you know, the counselor and this big bearded man came in, sort of looked me over and he beckoned me in and of course what I didn't know was that extraordinary things had been happening in his life and actually the way I was telling the story kind of keyed into that. So, one of the um one of the key figures in I mean I make much more of it even than Mallalerie does is on the Grail Knights encounter the White Heart >> um uh uh and then the White Heart is accompanied by four lions and it goes into a chapel and then when they get in the four lions become the four living creatures and they see Christ beyond.

[00:47:19]for a moment.

[00:47:21]>> Anyway, Martin sat me down and he said, "Um, I've been having a series of dreams in which a great stag, which kind of comes into my cottage and trashes it." And he said, "It keeps happening again and again, and it's making and he said, I kind of know it's Christ." Uh it's a bit awkward like he lives he you know he's got this big substack following of kind of neopagans you know but but I thought well here we are it's the beginning of Lent you know and we and I read him you know I thought well if God is moving in his life and calling him you know to Christianity then apart from his own salvation it's a reason which is to do with the church needs him as well as he needs the church and >> and I thought god what church is going to be big enough to hold this guy. So anyway, I wanted to talk to him about Lewis and Talking and particularly Talking's idea of in Christ myth becomes history. But I started by reading him Lewis's poem, a cliche comes out of its cage.

[00:48:23]The cliche in question being the world's gone back to paganism. And somebody some bishop said to Lewis Harmping, oh the world's gone back to pagan expecting Lewis to agree. And Lewis went like if only.

[00:48:34]Basically Lewis was saying the gospel spread first among you. It's actually be a lot easier to talk about the death and resurrection of Christ to a pagan.

[00:48:42]>> Yeah.

[00:48:42]>> Than it is to a mere materialist.

[00:48:45]>> So I read him this poem in which Lewis imagines modern England as pagan first under a Roman mode and then under a Norse mode.

[00:48:52]>> And he was amazed. He didn't know Lewis had written this poem. And then I told him, you know, the story of Addison's walk. But I would I wouldn't say I I mean I I wasn't even so so far as being a midwife. I was more just a gentle urgon. I mean, God was already doing extraordinary. But I so I said to him, it's the beginning of Lent.

[00:49:10]You should you should, you know, return to scripture. You should pray and you could and if you still think at the end of 40 days, this really is God in Christ calling you, then you should get baptized. It's what the early church did. That's what Lent is for, you know, and here we are, you know, Lent.

[00:49:27]>> And in fact, he did get baptized and he he but interestingly, he was received into the Orthodox Church, which was kind of I now realize kind of where he belongs in a way.

[00:49:36]But um so I was very h fortunate to be alongside that point. But in terms of this project, I couldn't have had a more encouraging development because God was already doing in his life, what I hoped this book might help to happen.

[00:49:53]>> Mhm. in the lives of lots of other if you like people who've despaed of the materialism but can't go back to Christianity yet for whatever reason you know baggage or >> but this this might present the gospel >> mhm >> in a way that's married to these great stories so so anyway the the really nice thing this is quite entertaining is is is um so I didn't so so Pete Peter's in a rabbit room said why don't you write I mean I'd acknowledge Martin in the acknowledgements of this and in the appendix.

[00:50:26]>> Uh so he said why don't you write to him and see if he'll he'll do the like we had the forward for this one from Susanna Clark which obviously I was thrilled by. So uh he's done the um >> he's done the forward.

[00:50:39]>> Oh nice.

[00:50:40]>> The coming of which he's done in in his in his inimitable style. It's very different from um and I tells me things. So he recalls this meeting that I've spoken to about this is he says a few so he say he says um referring to me he says a few years ago the man turned up at my cottage with a bottle of whiskey and a tattled tattered bundle of pages through the delicious fug of pipe smoke and rumpling of tweed I recognized the kindred spirit he also brought a storm with him so rockous we had to exist by candle light as all the wires and lights in my cottage immediately shorted He has this effect.

[00:51:22]Since then, to me and my friends, he has been known as Storm Crow.

[00:51:28]Malcolm is a true Christian in all the deep mystery of that word, you know.

[00:51:31]Well, I went to his cottage thinking it would be a stumbling block and offense to him that I was a Christian.

[00:51:36]>> But, you know, anyway, he was he had been prepared by his dreams for your coming. Well, and and is is the thing that is common uh between neopaganism and Christianity the belief that there is meaning in the world >> in the world itself and that yeah and that that things are and also the sense that we are alienated that we've lost a relationship and we need to find a way back into it. Now they think they can do it by by making up rituals which they think are ancient but aren't. And you know I mean druidism in particular was really dream dream dreamt up by romantics in the late 18th and early 19th century. I mean you know but the legend you know but but I I understand the impulse to do that and I think it's a healthier impulse than just trying to to digitize everything you know. So uh >> yeah. Well, I mean, we could sit here, I think, for hours and talk and thankfully you're here for a couple of days.

[00:52:36]>> Yeah.

[00:52:37]>> But, uh, I think at this juncture, >> can I ask one more question?

[00:52:42]>> Sorry.

[00:52:42]>> Yeah.

[00:52:43]>> So, we in the our fifth grade curriculum, we um read our students um read medieval lit. So, we're reading The Door and the Wall and Robin Hood. And we're we're using Roger Lancel and Green. Roger Lson Green's retelling of Arthur is the best I think of those.

[00:53:01]>> That's what I was going to ask is what would be your favorite retelling.

[00:53:04]>> No, cuz the thing about Mallalerie >> I mean there there was a famous thing in the 1930s they found another manuscript in Winchester and there was a completely new edition of Mallalerie. I mean I used the old one cuz I wanted the one that the other poets had used. But what they discovered really was now when you buy it it's not called the Mort Dtor. It's called the the works of Thomas Mallerie >> because what he was really doing was translating from a whole series of different French and Latin sources and he seems to been aware of the distinction between them and some of them repeated the story but in a different way with slightly different names or he's got three different versions of what is effectively the ship of Solomon. But what seems to have happened is that all these manuscripts arrived with Thomas Caxton >> and he just picked the title of one of them which was the mort data which was and then he printed them all >> without essentially editing. So there's ton of stuff in there. It's a wonderful it's like a quarry you can take material out of >> but it's very difficult.

[00:54:00]>> It's very difficult >> for the modern reader to follow the narrative thread. That's what is beautiful about this is I feel like and I've been so excited about this because I feel like we could put this in our high school curriculum after reading King Arthur in the grammar school that this is accessible >> Darth and Green I think has done a great job in kind of pioneering a path and not losing the sacral and you know there's a lovely little kind of Easter egg as they call it in in Lanselin Green because he was a friend of Louiswis isn't it disciple of Louiswis's and uh when he talks about Mur as it were passing into the earth. He lists all the possible places that he might be and he just says or perhaps he's lying under Braggen Wood >> and of course Braggen Wood is where he's found in that hideous strength. I mean it's completely >> oh I never knew that you know so if you've read that hideous strength you're really excited but if you read logs and green and you still oh my goodness brain wood it's going to be Merlin you know so so green has been very important to me um obviously I've used the medieval sources as well that I put in things that aren't in green but as a way of finding through I mean talking about your fifth graders and your sixth graders and things I mean there's a little issue about the order in which you do things here. So um which is kind of parallel with the Narnia things in some ways. If you take the whole Narniad um in a sense although he didn't know he was going to write the other ones perhaps >> following Aristotle you could say Lewis begins in medias race he tells you the the the line the world which is of course the heart and sense of it because it's the redemption story it's the atonement and redemption >> but eventually he decides to give you a creation story and he does the magician's nephew and he does and he does a so so I love the little debates about which order to read in it now I'm of the school of thought that says you need to know who Alen is and what he's done for Edmund and for everyone in Narnia.

[00:55:58]And when you know that then the account of his creation and his gift of freedom to the animals is all the more poignant and you've also fallen in love with Narnia >> during the lion the witch in the wardrobe and you've seen it redeemed. So you want to know about its creation. So that's the way it works but equally you can decide I want to begin at the beginning and go to the end. Now in this case I too have begun in media res begun I've begun with the grail because I think the grail is the heart of the matter and I in a sense I think it may it's it's in light of the grail that you see the importance of everything else.

[00:56:33]Why should we care about Camelot in the first place etc. >> So then this book as it were is followed by two prequels. So the next one is the coming of Arthur and then the one after that will be the days of the round table and that gets all the quest >> that gets that's all the quest that gets up to where we are here, >> right?

[00:56:54]>> And then the final one will be the passing of Arthur. Now, my hope is particularly for people who are familiar with this material that they'll they'll come with me to the Grail Castle and see the redemption >> of the wasteland and the coming of the Grail Knight. So that when I tell them in the coming of Arthur the story of the dollar a stroke as it originally happened they'll kind of I mean it's like uh when I remember when I when I was training for the priesthood we had to read these really u it was in the last gasp of the 80s and the the um this dreadful dethizing lit you know so-called historical criticism of of the gospels And then the lofty tone these people took. So I was reading a commentary on Luke and the guy says about the transfiguration. He says this is clearly a misplaced resurrection narrative, you know, as though Luke had kind of made a minor error with copying and pasting, you know, but anyway, nevertheless, it was real insight. I thought, oh my goodness, it isn't it is a resurrection narrative in some sense, but it's boy is it not misplaced like they see him on the Mount of Transfiguration and you know the veil is lifted if you like because they're about to go down into the kind of fog and darkness and and violence of Jerusalem.

[00:58:16]>> And they're going to see the one whom they've seen respendant on the mountain richly humiliated and crucified like a slave. And everybody will try to tell them that's all he ever was. Like this is just a disgusting, shameful, blasphemous person. And now we've demonstrated it.

[00:58:32]>> So they need to know what they saw. It's not misplaced at all. You know, he went to the cross for the joy that was set before him. So in a sense, I'm giving you the mount of the transfiguration here.

[00:58:42]>> Yes.

[00:58:43]>> Before we get into both the good and the bad of the the rest of the story.

[00:58:48]>> So Lancelot and and Gwen will be >> Oh, yeah. I mean, obviously they will be the end. Lancelot and I mean what you get here and this is a tragic I don't too many plot spoilers but there's a moment of real repentance for Lancelot here and a lot of people have written to me you know particularly men that's really you know >> now unfortunately >> the kingdom >> in the long story there is a kind of backsliding and then that is ruthlessly exploited by Morid so yes the kingdom falls but but in the coming of Arthur this is >> the whole point is I mean this is the whole of this is not only Christian wisdom But you know, classical wisdom, it's not a question of being on the winning side. It's a question of being on the right side, >> right?

[00:59:30]>> You know, that's right.

[00:59:31]>> And the real question to Arthur is, are you willing to do this in the knowledge that in the times and tides of history, it will fail, >> but it won't be forgotten, >> right?

[00:59:40]>> And the flame will kindle another. So when he's handed and this is in Mallalerie um when the lady when he's given Excalibur >> there it's the blade is written on on two sides and on one side it says take me up and on the other side it says cast me away >> and in my version which is coming out the the nimui the lady of the lake says are you willing to do all of this and expend yourself to build this thing up and then see everything you've made unmade >> because That's what this involves, >> right?

[01:00:14]>> Um, and when somebody knows that and has already in a sense made that choice and he will be wounded in the battle and he will cast the sword back into the lake that transforms everything he does in a sense. He's already been prepared for the defeat. He's he's got he's got his dying over with. And that's meant to be the point of baptism is that is that is that you know, I love the thing that's a brilliant thing that Paul says.

[01:00:41]Corinthian where he says you love to say this to one of your own congregations sometimes he says but you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God like it's already done you know you don't have to worry about death when it comes you've already done it you know if you're baptized into Christ you're baptized into his death >> so in a sense Arthur has to see that and take that on so he does all the loving and building of Camelot in the light of a defeat he already knows about >> right >> so then you can't dismay him. You can't say, "Oh, this is all going to come to nothing. It's not bloody worth it." You know, why don't you just give yourself a break? He He said, "No, it's not going to come to nothing, but I'm still going to do it."

[01:01:19]>> Still going to do it cuz it's the right thing to do.

[01:01:21]>> Yeah.

[01:01:22]>> So, the second book is The Coming of Arthur. And when when are we going to get that?

[01:01:26]>> That's coming out this November. So, >> November. Okay. I'm going to be I'm going to be doing various things in I'm coming back to the States in October >> and towards the end of October. It's a 20 Thursday I'm doing a conference in um in Boston um called lift lifting the veil uh from Boston to Camelot >> and uh books are going to be there and I'll be but I mean what I'm I'm having to turn the whole of my attention to this now this is the last you know of course >> work I'm doing so >> I'm not going to travel anymore as a as a professor if you like and setting out the grounds and theory that I've tried to set out for why the imagination is a truthbearing faculty and why we we need to recover the great stories. I mean, there are lots of people doing that in America as well here. But I'm having a last harrah of that. So, I'm going to open this conference with an account of why we need imaginative works and why we can trust a baptized imagination. But then the second half of the conference is just going to be about the works I've done and why what this is about.

[01:02:32]>> Um, so yeah, that's one. But that'll be in um go I don't remember my own days but it's it's it's called lifting the veil easy enough to find. Um >> this is um very difficult to find the Galah and the Gra sort of sold out more or less twice >> and now we can't get more until September.

[01:02:52]>> Can you not?

[01:02:53]>> No. We were going to >> cuz they did a second printing that was like twice as big as the first and >> they would never send I was trying to get 500 the first time and they would only give me two and then I tried to get 500 again and they would only give me two and then we begged and got 50 more.

[01:03:07]>> Oh, that's great. Well, no, they've got there's definitely a bigger one coming in as it were which they hope sort of before Christmas.

[01:03:13]>> Are you shocked at how quickly they're selling out?

[01:03:15]>> No, no, no. Well, I mean I remember >> or did you just know this is >> No, I didn't know. I was going this is exactly like Arthur. Mhm.

[01:03:22]>> I was going like I'm going to do this >> even if it goes nowhere. Like I'm the only I'm the person like I just told my mother I'm going to tell this story also cuz this is a book I would have wanted you know when I was you know a young man.

[01:03:34]>> So and I always love that conversation between Louis and talking about nobody's writing the books we want. We better write them ourselves you know >> but but uh no I so you know when you're making a pitch to a publisher you have supposed to have a so-called USP unique selling point. So I I said to to rabbit and also to counter progress I said well my USP I suppose is nobody's done this for about 150 years but then I was saying that might also be the unique sinking point there might be a reason and I had a feeling either that it would sink without trace and it would be I would just be known as G's folly it would be like some you know rambling decrepit aristocrat who's built a ruin in his garden you know that would be it or it would do that it would this would be a cultural moment.

[01:04:23]And I tell you what gave me hope is Martin Shaw >> like he was ready for this. He was I mean God would have done things when Martin Shod is doing amazing things in and through him as well. I mean his new liturgies of the wild book. But I thought maybe this is a moment. Maybe we people know they need this stuff and they haven't. I was very pleased when the Times of of London, they gave it a very good review, but they said this is the opposite of AI slop.

[01:04:53]>> Well, >> and you know, I thought that's high praise.

[01:04:56]>> That's high praise. No, they said it's a miracle this. And then I mean the thing you want all reviewers to say like the time said, buy this book immediately.

[01:05:04]>> Oh, very nice. Well, we say the same thing.

[01:05:07]>> Yeah. Except except we can't get it buy it immediately but there's a >> very I mean because there's always delays getting it from Rabbit Room the best place to buy is Rabbit Room >> that's where we buy it.

[01:05:19]>> Yeah. No but in generally to anyone you know listening to this podcast just go on Rabbit Room site and get it direct from >> Oh well yes that but I'm trying to buy it as a distributor.

[01:05:29]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:30]>> Yeah. No I think it is going into actual bookstores which is great. I think that's what I'm trying to do is >> Oh, well, I mean, it's in my book store.

[01:05:39]>> Excellent.

[01:05:39]>> Memorial College has a You >> got a book as well. It's very good.

[01:05:43]Yeah.

[01:05:43]>> Yes. And so, and this is part of it. And I just can't get enough of them. So, I'm glad they're doing another big >> They are. No, they're doing they're doing a much bigger printing because I think they think that people are going to realize this will make a really nice gift. Anyway, well, I'm glad they that when that they gave you the 50 extra.

[01:06:00]>> They did. Yes. We had to beg.

[01:06:02]>> Yeah. Um, this is for us the first time I think that we've all so we have Martin short lists for the Parnasses Prize and we all read we pass the books around and read them and this is the first time I think that we've ever all like started gotten 50 pages in and said this is the book.

[01:06:22]>> Hopefully he doesn't mess it up by the end.

[01:06:25]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's that and then there's the next one. Well, you actually see I'm going to give you when I give the when you, you know, receive the ward, I'm going to going to give you >> I'm going to talk a little bit about tradition and mentoring and handing on a torch, but then I'm going to read you from this new one, some moments of mentoring, you know.

[01:06:41]>> Great.

[01:06:42]>> Yeah.

[01:06:43]>> All right. Well, thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.

[01:06:47]>> Thanks for joining us today on classical etc by Memorialia Press. If you like what you heard, please like, subscribe or share this episode or comment. We love to hear your questions and your comments. If you want to learn more about Memorialia Press, please go to memorialapress.com.

[01:07:07]This has been classical etc. We're so glad you joined us and we'll see you next time.