Dr Who and I:

Paul Cornell is the writer of the Doctor Who episodes 'Father's Day', 'Human Nature' and 'The Family 
of Blood'.  Tonight he will be talking about the relationship between his own life experiences, his 
spiritual life, and his work.

  

Charles Williams, Iris Murdoch and the Flight from the Enchanter:

Both Charles Williams and Iris Murdoch had “bad magicians” in their lives:  charismatic and domineering figures from whom they need to break free.  For Williams, it was A.E. Waite; for Murdoch, Elias Cannetti.  Both writers used the experience to inform their fiction.

Two representative Murdoch novels for this purpose would be “The Flight from the Enchanter” and “A Fairly Honourable Defeat”.  For Williams, one could look at “Shadows of Ecstasy” and “All Hallows Eve”.  I want to compare the magicians in these books, and also their antagonists.  The differences between the two writers are considerable, and obvious:  Williams is a supernaturalist Christian, Murdoch a demythologising fellow traveller.  Yet there are distinct points of comparison (for instance, in their use of London both as a location and as a kind of extended metaphor).  And above all – for my purpose – there is a comparable moral vision, encompassing both the glamour of evil and the ordinariness of the good.

 

 

If Religion is Dangerous, What Should Happen to Believers? The Dawkins Debate:


I shall discuss some leading  metaphors in  the Dawkins thesis (especially that of  religion as a "virus")  and their ominous socio-political implications.  I shall also have something to say about faith, and religious imagination, with a brief homage to C.S. Lewis on imagination and narrative


 

 Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration:

This paper is based on the author's forthcoming book of the same title. For an abstract of the book, click here.