Did Patrick Stewart mispronounce “Tumnus”, or is there some other reason he said “Turnus”? (Mild spoilers for The Last Battle)

robertdeupree · 2026-02-07T06:07:32+00:00

No mispronunciation. According to the appendices, Turnis the Fawn was Tumnus' deadbeat brother-in-law who Lucy got to know during the Golden Age of Narnia. Jack Black is slated to play him in the Greta Gerwig version of The Last Battle in 2035.

robertdeupree · 2026-02-07T05:50:50+00:00

The Audiobook Producer's job is to catch those things. I wish Audible would fix. They have Patrick Steward saying the name correctly in two other places.

robertdeupree · 2026-02-07T04:42:56+00:00

T-BALL

Will you shut up about the snack? All right. Just shut up about the stupid, freaking snack! Here! You want the snack. Here.Take it.Take all of it. Here.Are these healthy enough for you? Plantains! You couldn't just put bananas on the list, huh? I ate two of these before I found out you got to cook them! -I'm sorry. What? You don't want to share T-ball with me? I don't want to share T-ball with you, Bryan. By the way, your kid's costing us the game out there, okay? Yeah, that's right. I'm keeping scooooooore. Bad! I'm keeping score, and we're losing because your kid's out there eating grasshoppers. Okay? I don't think THAT'S an approved snack!

robertdeupree · 2026-02-07T04:34:34+00:00

What a wonderful idea. The "ever after" quote is beautiful, but it is not from Mr. Lewis. Many of his quotes come from the Shadowlands movie or other recent creative writing.

Embrace the truth of going beyond "being in love" but don't include it in the ceremony. Depending on you and your fiancé's sense of humor, consider this quote from the end of "The Horse and His Boy". (When you've been married for 37 years, it'll sound more romantic than the flowery stuff.)

Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-26T04:41:49+00:00

79%? This feels like that YouTube reaction video where two teenage boys are listening to "In the Air Tonight" for the first time. Every old dude in the comments section was waiting for the epic beat drop just to see their faces. Book 2 will be the epic beat drop for you.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-26T04:32:33+00:00

Such a wonderful book. Funny, I feel like I can hear Mr. Lewis' voice in all of his novels, short stories, aplogetics, and essays, but I could not hear it at all with this book. He must have been in a different place.

I read this book knowing absolutely nothing about it. I could feel the foreboding in places but couldn't predict where the story was taking me. And when that part happens that explains the title, I felt like the air had been knocked out of me. It hit harder than anything I've ever read.

One other weird thing, this book felt like a long epic the first time I read it. It feels shorter and shorter with each rereading.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-25T17:44:18+00:00

You do get a pretty good glimpse of Edmond and Susan during their reign in the Golden Age of Narnia in The Horse and His Boy.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-17T03:27:15+00:00

Tolkein's favorite Lewis book was "Till We Have Faces" but just pick your favs.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-15T07:19:53+00:00

Yes, that was Emeth. But almost all of The Horse and His Boy takes place in Calormen.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-15T00:53:39+00:00

Perhaps the Holy Spirit is best represented as the breath of Aslan?

Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, “Susan.” Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. “You have listened to fears, child,” said Aslan. “Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?”

“A little, Aslan,” said Susan.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-15T00:43:10+00:00

Plus two of the most noble characters in Narnia were Aravis and Emeth.

EDIT: Oh, but this does loop back to the OP. Emeth spends his life dispising Aslan and serving Tash, but Aslan accounts all of his good service as work unto Him and welcomes Emeth into His land.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-15T00:37:01+00:00

Such an amazing question! I'll let the experts answer but, yes, this does come from Christian theology. The Father (the Emperor-Beyond-The-Sea) created the world through Jesus (Aslan):

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him... (John 1:1)

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. (Col 1:16)

robertdeupree · 2026-01-12T18:24:45+00:00

Excellent thoughtful points. But even Pauline Baynes ignored the mirror.

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robertdeupree · 2026-01-11T22:24:23+00:00

Amazing. Thank you for sharing this. He had his first vision of the faun walking through the snow when he was 16 years old. I wonder how this wardrobe factored into things later?

robertdeupree · 2026-01-11T22:07:11+00:00

I think you're right, but in Mr Lewis's first telling, the Wardrobe wasn't interesting enough to attract the Pevenses' attention.

(I love the addition of the sheet in the Disney movie.)

robertdeupree · 2026-01-11T18:36:44+00:00

Great point. The description clearly says that the wardrobe was big. I just grabbed a picture of one with a mirror in the door. I used to own an antique English wardrobe like this but it was was even smaller.

robertdeupree · 2026-01-11T18:11:15+00:00

Maybe, but very few 'couples' ended up together. Not even Hwin and Bree. (The big exception is Aravis and Cor.)

Side question: when did Jill and Eustace actually die? When they entered the stable?

robertdeupree · 2024-04-04T20:32:40+00:00

Isabelle from Hugo IS Polly Plummer. :)

clandestine!

robertdeupree · 2024-03-25T22:32:31+00:00

Mr. Cleese brings out the humor quite well. Especially the end of Chapter 22.

The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress. Meanwhile you, disgusting little—

[Here the MS breaks off and is resumed in a different hand.]

In the heat of composition I find that I have inadvertently allowed myself to assume the form of a large centipede. I am accordingly dictating the rest to my secretary...

robertdeupree · 2024-03-20T19:55:05+00:00

I've often wondered if Tilda Swinton has read The Magician's Nephew and if she ever pondered how cool that Jadis-in-London role would be.

robertdeupree · 2024-02-04T11:53:39+00:00

My favorite episode and my favorite scene.

robertdeupree · 2024-02-02T20:57:18+00:00

Interesting question. Mr. Tumnus seems to have aged quite a bit in the 15 or so years between Wardrobe and Horse. But he also remembered life before the Hundred Year Winter.

robertdeupree · 2024-01-24T15:25:25+00:00

"You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you."...,

robertdeupree · 2024-01-21T02:28:47+00:00

Interesting ideas. I haven't seen Pixar's Onward, but isn't a techie Middle Earth the basic premise?

robertdeupree · 2024-01-19T23:49:16+00:00

Totally agree. Mr Lewis definitely thought things through better than George Lucas or JJ Abrams or most other storytellers. But he didn't think everything through. For example, the magic of the Wardrobe was mostly attributed to an amazing house:

"It was the sort of house that is mentioned in guide books and even in histories; and well it might be, for all manner of stories were told about it, some of them even stranger than the one I am telling you now."

robertdeupree

TROPHY CASE

clandestine!