C.S. Lewis – Transcripts from an interview with Walter Hooper

I’ve been working on a long form post on my reflections on reading over 4,000 pages of C.S.Lewis’s letters for a couple of years now. It’s almost complete. One piece of the puzzle that helped fill in the gaps in his letters was an incredible interview with the editor of the letters, Walter Hooper. Calling Mr. Hooper an ‘editor’ feels so small in comparison to the monumental effort he made to add so many valuable and obscure footnotes and biographies. I could talk for hours about the unparalleled contribution Hooper has made to modern Christianity. In fact, few people would know of Lewis if not for Hooper. I’ll likely write a longer post just on this topic someday, especially noting the value of his role as the curator and caretaker of such a rich resource. His was not the glamorous role – his was in the shadows.

Anyways, I listened to the interviews he did with Eric Metaxas. There were so many fantastic quotes in these interviews, that I wanted to include a few in my forthcoming post, but could not find a transcript, so I transcribed it myself.

If you are the slightest fan of C.S. Lewis’s works, you’ll want to read this or listen to the interviews. So amazing. Thank you Eric Metaxas for making these a reality. What a gift to all those that love Lewis.

Here is a link to the PDF of the transcript.

The original interviews occurred as Socrates in the City Events and were in three parts in 2015. Watch on YouTube here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.

Side Note: These are incomplete transcripts, probably 95% of the interview is included along with a few explanatory notes from me. Also many abbreviations for repeated names and title. These were modified for my personal research purposes (research for yet published article on C.S. Lewis). I have not received permission from Eric Metaxas or Socrates in the City to post this. If you represent either of and would like for me to take it down, please reach out. I’m happy to do so. But I’d prefer they stay accessible for those who love Lewis, if not here, then on the Socrates in the City site.