The Old Books and the Future of Freedom: A Guest Post by Joseph Loconte

By Joseph Loconte / November 26, 2025 at 12:01 am

Imagination helps overcome even the darkest times. Author friends Tolkien and Lewis have inspired countless readers — now discover how WWII shaped their writing. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Joseph Loconte on writing The War for Middle-Earth.

Hardcover $14.99 ~~$29.99~~

The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945

By Joseph Loconte

In Stock Online

Hardcover $14.99 ~~$29.99~~

For fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, discover the story behind their unique friendship forged in the darkness of World War II and how it inspired the stories of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity.

In a world devastated by the cataclysm of war, two extraordinary authors and friends, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, delivered a bracing vision of the human story: a path back to goodness, beauty, and faith. How did they do it?

In the throes of the Second World War, Oxford University scholar C.S. Lewis published an essay called “On the Reading of Old Books.” One might assume from the title that the essay was written by an ivory tower academic comically out of touch with the crisis of the moment: the struggle between Western civilization and fascist barbarism.

In fact, Lewis offered a moral and intellectual antidote to the totalitarian temptation: a return to ancient truths to help defeat the lies of his own day, and of ours.

Every age has its own outlook, he wrote, its distinctive values and ideals. It may be successful at recognizing and upholding these ideas. But it is just as likely to be blind to the dangers of other ideas—such as white supremacy or the eugenics movement, for example—and to make tragic decisions as a result. “We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period,” he explained, “and that means the old books.”

The love of great literature drew Lewis together in friendship with another Oxford scholar, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Like Lewis, Tolkien admired the ability of medieval writers to combine the highest ideals of the classical world with Christianity. The great works of Western Civilization—such as the writings of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton—were indispensable because they captured universal truths about the human condition.

In an age of disillusionment with traditional ideas about morality and religion, both authors decided that several truths needed to be recovered. Chief among them was the idea of individual heroism to combat evil and defend the good.

Tolkien turned to works such as Beowulf, the story of a king who risks everything to defeat the monster Grendel, its mother, and a fearsome dragon. “Let us by all means esteem the old heroes,” he said, those “torn between duties equally sacred, dying with their backs to the wall.” For Lewis, Virgil’s Aeneid was a literary lodestar: a bitterly realistic story about the need for courage in the in the fog of war. “No man who has read it once with full perception remains an adolescent.”

In 1936, Tolkien and Lewis made a literary pact: They would reintroduce the older concept of the hero and reinvent him for the modern mind. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 and began writing its epic sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Lewis published the first installment of his Ransom Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, and would go on to write classic works of fantasy, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia. These stories are awash in the themes of bravery, humility, faith, and sacrifice for a noble cause.

With the near death of the humanities in our colleges and universities, however, most Americans are no longer nourished—or chastened—by the ancient writers. Lacking historical perspective, we are prone to cynicism and to ideologies that draw strength from their hatreds.

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis provided a path out of this darkness. In the midst of a catastrophic war, they insisted that the renewal and ultimate survival of Western civilization depended upon the recovery of its classic texts—and the ideals embedded within them. As Lewis described it, we must “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.”

***

Joseph Loconte, PhD, is a Presidential Scholar at New College of Florida and the C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. His forthcoming book is The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945.