Douglas Gresham Talks to NarniaWeb About The Horse and His Boy | Talking Beasts
Podcast Discussion
We are in the middle of a chapter-by-chapter commentary on The Horse and His Boy, which is dedicated to C.S. Lewis’ stepsons David and Douglas Gresham. Douglas joined us from his home in Malta to talk about the book, his relationship with the author, and The Logos’s Theatre’s upcoming stage adaptation. Listen below!
At the end of this episode, Mr. Gresham called on NarniaWebbers to #VOTENarnia in PBS’ upcoming series “The Great American Read.” Let’s answer the call! You can vote once per day as many times as you would like.
Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
http://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/quiz/
This is the PBS link I believe Mr Gresham was talking about.
What happened to the silver chair movie? is it still happeing? All anyone looks to be doing is to shamelessly promote some play no one cares about.
I will be watching the PBS schedule for this special program. Hopefully the network will devote considerable time to the one volume edition of The Chronicles of Narnia. This was a really great interview with Mr. Gresham.
As far as we know it's still happening. That's just not what Mr. Gresham was on to talk about.
I think sometime in June or July, we may have a big announcement for the film. Probably a filming date or release date.
Well…I'm interested in this play. I happen to prefer The Horse and his Boy to the Silver Chair, and there's a chance that I might actually be able to watch a dvd of this play unlike with plays of LWW, PC and VODT.
It is true though that play versions can't really capture one of the main things I love about the books like movies can. Special effects for the theatre kind of have to be…symbolic and I love C.S. Lewis describes things like talking animals in Narnia as if they were real. But plays based on Narnia books are still definitely of interest to me.
Can human trafficing and slavery be stopped in todays world….Anything being done…..is there many groups doing so? where are they???
Since Gresham is involved in the filmmaking process, doing an interview on the pre-production of a film in progress is harder to do with him. Obviously we'd love for anyone involved to just sit with us and answer any questions we like, but for natural reasons they are a bit tight lipped about the process right now.
william Polachuk…
http://www.a21.org/index.php?site=true
This is a slavery abolishment site.
These guys too – International Justice Mission. https://ijm.org.au/
Great conversation between the two of you. Always interesting to listen to Gresham, especially since he is, as he said, the last person alive who knew Lewis well. I was surprised to hear how candidly he spoke of his brother. Every now and then I've tried to find out more about the other Gresham brother, ever since I saw Shadowlands (where they simply wrote David Gresham out of reality). Sad to hear he was a paranoid schizophrenic and unpleasant to be around, and also that he's passed away. Despite that sad note, it's refreshing to hear someone open up in an honest way about their family and memories, rather than romanticize or blur recollections.
That's a really interesting thing Gresham shared about Lewis's reaction to the slaughter of horses during WWI. I have never heard that before, but I can easily see that being an influence on the character of Bree as a slave horse being forced to fight in the Calormene wars as a tool rather than a free soldier fighting for his country.
I've heard of this before. There was a book called War Horse (Michael Morpungo) which I have a copy of, and which was also made into a film and a stage play. C.S.Lewis came into WW1 about April, 1918, so he well might have met, not only horses from UK, but also Australians whose horses would have been Walers, our own New South Wales breed, which are still part of police work, and were on supply in the 2000 Sydney Olympics for Equestrian events. It was C.S.Lewis' books which gave me some appreciation of these lovely creatures, not the incessant racing industry. We have a major intersection called the Lighthorse Interchange to commemorate the Australian Lighthorse brigade, obviously cavalry troops, whose fighting at Beersheba allowed our troops to do something towards the end of WW1 that even Richard I, the Lionheart could not do, and that was to accept the surrender of Jerusalem. It would be cheering to know that our horses were never shipped overseas again for fighting in any battlefield since in which Aussies have taken part.
Love Justice International does great work on the human trafficking front: https://www.lovejustice.ngo/
And remember the horses at the end of 'The Last Battle'?
I am Groot.
("My patient of waiting for the next Narnia movie is almost dying.")