How World War I Inspired The Lord of the Rings
...and other things you will learn from our new issue on faith in the World Wars
By Jennifer Woodruff Tait
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love The Lord of the Rings. I take every opportunity to sneak it into everything. I am a huge fan of all the Inklings and their friends and mentors, in fact, and immensely enjoyed working on our issue #113, Seven Literary Sages.
Now I'm happy to report that both Tolkien and Lewis show up in our upcoming issue on faith in the World Wars—and we didn't even have to sneak them in! The war was profoundly influential on the fiction of both Tolkien and Lewis. You can read a bit about that here, in the testimony of Tolkien's grandson Simon about his memories of his famous grandfather. (Simon has, it turns out, actually written a book called No Man's Land based on his grandfather's wartime experiences.) You can read a bit more about it in our World Wars issue very shortly.
The whole issue is a compelling and moving one full of stories of how people wrestled with Christian obligations in a time of national crisis. Sign up here to get it in your mailbox when it ships—it went to the printer's on Friday!