I had lunch yesterday with …

I had lunch yesterday with Alan Jacobs, whose new book The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis will be published next week, just in time for Disney’s movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe . Alan once wrote a hilarious piece in the Weekly Standard that mentioned the race among American evangelical colleges to collect memorabilia of C.S. Lewis, like a saint’s relics, including the sharp rivalry over which American school possesses the true wardrobe that was in Lewis’s room while he was writing his children’s masterpiece. Norman Stone, who made the Shadowlands movie about Lewis, is now working on a documentary about his subject, and he is reportedly gathering material on the frequent spats and insults that peppered Lewis’s friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien. “No harm in him,” Lewis wrote after one discussion with his friend, “only needs a smack or so.” One could say the same of so many friends.