> He was required to write an official account of his term, and did so as a five-act drama in blank verse entitled “The Tragi-Comicall Briefe Reigne of Lewis the Bald”.

Nice to see he was capable of self-deprecating humor.

> The sheer level of spartan discomfort, for instance, that university denizens were expected to endure

Sometimes* I wonder how much of the spartan discomfort in 1984 was authorial discretion characterising outer party life, and how much was just the background normal spartan discomfort of mid-XX britain.

* like when I read that Orwell had been burning furniture to stay warm

Not very impressed with the writer: CS Lewis was impressed enough with JRRT that the character of Ransome in the Space Trilogy is based on him.

And Shadowlands was probably based on the book “A Grief Observed” , which was not mentioned.

Further the Space Trilogy mentioned multiple times Lewis’ dread of bureaucracy including the NICE being an agent of evil and Studdock’s wrongful desire to be part of the in crowd of the fictional school’s management.

"Magdalen" is pronounced Maudlin. That's how Oxford's locals detect 'tourists' ;)

Interesting. I thought “Till We Have Faces” was the main work that dealt with losing his wife.