Joseph Loconte on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the battle against the spirit of their age.
Author, educator, and filmmaker Joseph Loconte is the director of the Rivendell Center in New York City and serves as a presidential scholar at New College of Florida and as the C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. He also serves as a senior fellow at Sagamore Institute and at the Trinity Forum. Loconte is the author of several books, including: the New York Times bestseller, "A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918" and "God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West." His most recent book is "The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945" (HarperCollins 2025). Loconte’s commentary has appeared in both scholarly and popular journals, including: National Affairs, The New Criterion, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review.
This lecture occurred on November 18, 2025 at UATX.
00:00 — Preview
00:21 — Why Joseph Loconte launched his book at UATX
02:06 — A sinner in need of grace
03:47 — The killing fields of 1914
06:39 — In 1933, the Oxford Union refused to fight for king and country
08:55 — Was “fear itself” the only thing to fear in the 1930s?
12:21 — Bilbo Baggins
15:14 — Disenchantment and lost innocence
17:34 — The Modernist movement
19:16 — Mussolini in 1936
20:50 — Where is the United States?
22:30 — Tolkien and Lewis’s pact
24:35 — “The Space Trilogy”
28:01 — The genocide of the Jews
32:01 — How myth and epic recover biblical truth
34:49 — The pope and FDR celebrate Chamberlain
36:14 — Winston Churchill: “This is the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup”
37:43 — Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton
40:29 — The day that mothers sent their children away
42:14 — “War is the spark that lights the flame of imagination”
45:02 — Halifax takes a page from Saruman
48:38 — How England could have lost WWII
52:43 — “The Screwtape Letters”
53:59 — A destitute year
1:00:16 — Is this escapism?
1:02:05 — C.S. Lewis risked his life to defend Christianity
1:06:37 — The Ring of Power
1:10:40 — The foundation of Tolkien and Lewis’s friendship
1:15:47 — Stories of radiance and nobility written in the land of shadow
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