I’ve published accessible biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the story of their remarkable friendship, life-changing for both of them. Related to their lives is the literary circle of friends, the Inklings, of whichI’ve written a group biography, The Oxford Inklings.      I served on the advisory board for The Lewis Bible, published by HarperCollins.

EVENTS

Much of my time is tied up with researching and writing my current books and contributed chapters in progress, and book editing or related work with authors.

In recent years I spoken at conferences in varied places. One related to C.S. Lewis as a Christian communicator (the national Desiring God Ministries conference in Minneapolis, USA) and the other to the Inklings (held by the Inklings Fellowship in Oxford). I also gave the Edgar B. Hollis lecture at the historic Carnegie Library in Newnan, Georgia, USA, and a lecture on C.S. Lewis as a broadcaster in Cambridge (at the Round Church for Christian Heritage). I was also a main speaker at an international congress in Madrid called “Fantastic Literature: recreation and realism”, based around C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, which was held at CEU San Pablo University. In Spring 1914, I returned to Georgia, to the Carnegie Library, to take part in a panel with Ralph Wood and Peter Wallace on C.S. Lewis’s vision, and how he understood the darkness that so often falls on our world, and the redemptive power of goodness. In Spring 2015 I taught some classes on the Inklings to students at Belmont University in Nashville, and lectured there and at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. This was followed by speaking at a conference retreat one glorious weekend in Montreat, North Carolina. Before returning to the UK I made another visit to Newnan, Georgia, which included talking to two classes at Jefferson Parkway Elementary School on Narnia. On a stopover in Chicago for a few days on my return flight from Atlanta I was able to research at The Wade Center Wheaton, do a live radio interview in Chicago, visit my publisher at IVP, and give a lecture at the Wade! Since then I participated in a memorable and in depth Inklings Forever conference at Taylor University, Indiana. The conference talks and panels have been published in Inklings Forever X (Winged Lion Press, 2017).

A lecture I gave at the Temenos Institute -- C.S. Lewis, ‘The “Imaginative Man”, the Self and the Other’ -- is to be published in The Temenos Review.

TRANSLATIONS

Various of my books have been translated into a total of about 17 languages, those translated most being Tolkien and C.S. Lewis:  The story of their friendship (The gift of friendship) and AD33: The year that changed the world, as well as  my biographies of C,S, Lewis and of Tolkien, My guide to Narnia is also popular overseas, e.g. in Japanese translation.