Pullman recently went on Alex O’Connor’s Within Reason podcast, reiterating his long-held, self-described hatred of Narnia – he thinks Lewis tells lies to children. But what do Lewis and Pullman have in common with their view of imagination? Can you have a Republic of Heaven instead of a Kingdom? Is Pullman "of Aslan's party without knowing it"?

I was delighted that the Critic online magazine chose to publish my response to why Philip Pullman, exploring how he is more like C. S. Lewis than he might think.

I’ve enjoyed the discussion it has created, with long threads debating it on Facebook groups about C. S. Lewis, mythology and science fiction.

Check it out and let me know what you think – and keep reading here for further reflections on this debate from my academic paper on the topic…

Read the article

A bonus for supporters

My article for the Critic is based on an academic paper I gave at the C. S. Lewis International Interdisciplinary Conference back in November. As a bonus for my supporters, I’m including my paper and a video of me delivering it below, covering the topic from some different angles (plus a bunch of footnotes!)

Almost all my output is available freely, but as a freelance writer and editor, I give a significant amount of time to writing and podcasting about imagination, meaning-making and faith here on Substack.

That comes with real costs: financial (software subscriptions and the like) as well as time and opportunity cost – it’s time I’m then not spending doing paid editorial work.

Of Man’s First Disobedience: innocence, wisdom and the Fall in The Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials

Down through the years, poets, storytellers and theologians have interpreted and reinterpreted the origin myth of the Fall. C. S. Lewis and Phillip Pullman each reimagine the Fall as a way of engaging with questions of innocence and wisdom, and what it means to grow up as a human being.

Pullman’s trilogy is very consciously a response to the Narnia books, both deeply influenced by them and seeking to repudiate many of their messages. “I hate the Narnia books,” said Pullman, “and I hate them with deep and bitter passion, with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling away”.1

But is this an accurate appraisal of the Narnia books, and are the ideas of childhood and growing up in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy really so different? I believe that while there are deep theological differences, there are also some surprising affinities and continuities, as we’ll explore.

The differences in outlook are evident from their very beginnings. There is an intriguing parallel with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the opening chapter of Northern Lights: both share in the characters of Lucy and Lyra young female protagonists who each have a strong sense of curiosity, and crucially, both begin their adventures by hiding in a wardrobe.

But the differing circumstances in which they do so encapsulates the deep difference in outlooks between the two stories: Lyra is trespassing, a transgression of the rules, whereas Lucy’s exploration is innocent. What are the implications of this?

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Easter greetings to you all! As a reader and sometime scholar of Arthurian literature, I’m thrilled that Galahad and the Grail, book one of Merlin’s Isle, Malcolm Guite’s epic poetic retelling of the “matter of Britain”, is now published, available from Canterbury Press in the UK and Rabbit Room Press in the USA, wonderfully illustrated by Stephen Crotts.

I invite you to join me in an online book group to discuss it over 3 weeks, to come together and chat it through, whether you are new to the story of Arthur or deeply immersed in the tradition.

Sessions will take place Mondays 8pm BST / 4pm EDT / 3pm CDT / 1pm PDT:

• Week 1 — Monday 13th April: Prelude / Book One: The Coming of Galahad

• Week 2 — Monday 20th April: Book Two: Adventures of the Quest

• Week 3 — Monday 27th April: Book Three: The Achievement of the Grail / Epilogue

Note this is purely a fan/community book group, not associated with or endorsed by Hutchmoot, Rabbit Room, Canterbury Press or Malcolm Guite (though I hope they will be glad that this kind of community-led discussion is happening!)

Sign up here

Why join this group?

• Fun and informal fan discussion

• Dig deeper into the spiritual and philosophical themes of the poem

• Insights from me as your resident student of the Arthurian tradition – I studied it and wrote about it for my English Literature MA so I know my way around it (though not quite as intimately as Malcolm Guite!)

What will the format be?

The sessions will be 90 minutes long and will include:

• Reading selections from the book

• A short introduction from myself putting it in the context of the Arthurian tradition and introducing some themes and questions

• Open time for facilitated discussion

You will be welcome to join in and share your perspective. I’ll seek to gently shepherd the discussion to give everyone who wants to speak a fair chance to participate. If you just want to listen in without talking, that’s welcome too!

Who is the group for?

The book group is open to all — whether you are subscribed to my newsletter or not, whether you are in the UK or elsewhere, consider yourself creative or not, whether you have a faith perspective or different outlook — if you are interested in the book, you are very welcome!

Sign up here

What else I’ve been up to

I recently made another appearance on the Premier Unbelievable podcast to debate morality with an Objectivist (follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy).

Now Objectivism is pretty philosophically unfashionable in many quarters and I think it’s got big issues – but any set of ideas that a significant number of people believe in is worth engaging, and the contrast between the Objectivist ethic of rational self-interest and Christian ethic of self-giving love makes for an illuminating foil.

I hope to share more thoughts and reflections on the debate in a subsequent post, and particularly how Ayn Rand’s novels offer an imaginative vision of her philosophy that is a key part of her continuing influence. But for now you can check out the debate here:

What’s coming up

I’ve had a busy time lately working on my book on imagination and meaning-making, as well as a few different illnesses hitting the family, so I had to have a bit of a pause on releasing new essays and on new episodes of Imaginative Discipleship.

But fear not, there’s plenty coming up, with episodes on reimagining being human, on storytelling and on “baptising the imagination” with myth.

I recently finished reading Liturgies of the Wild by Martin Shaw and have lots I want to say about rewilding our imaginations…

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Galahad and the Grail online book group

I’ve also been excited to get hold of my copy of Malcolm Guite’s new Arthurian epic poem, Galahad and the Grail.

I’ll be running an online book group to discuss it starting after Easter - if you would like to take part, whether new to the Arthur story, or immersed in the tales, please vote for the time slots that would suit you!

It’s open to all, whether paid or unpaid subscribers.

Register your interest

The Miracle at Mount Doom

On this day in Middle-earth, the Ring was destroyed. But this date, 25th March, is actually a theological Easter Egg that’s key to understanding the Lord of the Rings.

This date is the Feast of Annunciation, which in the liturgical calendar celebrates the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to bring the news that she would give birth to the Messiah.

It’s also the traditional date of the Crucifixion. It’s one of several clues Tolkien scattered through the Lord of the Rings hinting at his deeper purpose.

Want another clue? We’re currently in the season of Lent, which in the run-up to Easter marks Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. The Fellowship left Lothlorien 40 days before Sam and Frodo reached Mount Doom - their own wilderness wandering.

Why did Tolkien do this? In a letter, he described Lord of the Rings as a fundamentally Catholic and religious work - though he was careful to absorb the symbolism deeply into the story.

The ending of the book, where — spoiler alert! — Frodo takes the Ring, only for the quest to succeed because Gollum seizes it and falls into the fires of Mount Doom, was what Tolkien called eucatastrophe, a happy twist which he saw as the key characteristic of fairy stories.

Tolkien saw fairy story eucatastrophes as a far off gleam of the story of the Gospel, of God’s gracious rescue of humanity from sin through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In his essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’, Tolkien described Jesus’ incarnation, God coming as a human being, as the Eucatastrophe of history, and the Resurrection, when Jesus rose from the dead, as the Eucatastrophe of the incarnation.

So one of the reasons Lord of the Rings resonates powerfully with so many is because it is reflecting something of the power of the Christian story.

Does that resonate with you? Let me know what you think — and how you’re marking Tolkien Reading Day.

I’ve also got lots of thoughts about Stephen Colbert’s involvement with another new Lord of the Rings film, but I’ll share about that another time soon - but let me know in the comments your first reactions!

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I’m excited that the video of this poem has been chosen as an exhibit at the Hadau Arts Exhibition in Cardiff, Wales, with the theme Holding the Future? “Hadau” is a Welsh word meaning “seeds” and I’ve

I’ll be at the exhibition opening this Saturday 7 March at 7pm, and is free with chance to meet many of the artists.

There’s also the upcoming Hadau Arts Conference on Saturday 21 March, with a special Urban Wordsmiths x Hadau spoken word evening the night before on Friday 20 March. More details of those after the poem!

If you’re in reach of Cardiff, it would be great to see you there (sorry international friends!

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As my friend , who will be speaking at the conference, says, “in times of crisis, make art”. And it certainly seems to me a fitting response to our uncertain times.

Scroll on down to read the poem and for more conference details!

Planet Planet Burning Bright

With apologies to William Blake, St John of Patmos, the Met Office
and future generations of the human race

Planet Planet Burning Bright
No forest left in thy dark night
What mortal hand or eye
Dare deface thy fearful glory?

In what distant deeps and skies
Burnt the fires of our desires?
On what shores dared we destroy?
What the hand, dared stoke the flames?

Cloudy with a chance of extinction
Flooding of a few homes and major population centres
is possible

Whose the hammers? whose the chains?
In whose furnace forged the acid rains?
When the sun throws down its rays
And boils oceans with its gaze:

Will we smile our work to see?
Will we who killed the Lamb kill thee?

Danger of substantial disruption to
Travel plans and human civilisation
Forecast of survival: moderate to poor

Is it time? A time for wrath?
For destroying those who destroy the earth?

Mountains fall on us
Hills cover us
The earth and everything done to it will be laid bare

Planet Planet Burning Bright
How can we stand in the Lamb’s sight?

Stormy with a chance of apocalypse
Take action now to keep yourself and others safe.

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Urban Wordsmiths x Hadau, Friday 20 March

Entrance is included with a Hadau conference ticket, or you can book for the evening alone here:

Book on Eventbrite

Hadau Conference, Saturday 21 March

Urban Crofters Church partners with Morphē Arts to host an Exhibition and a Conference to gather and deepen the conversation of arts and faith in Wales. Speakers include Adrienne Chaplin (philosopher of art) and (artist and author of Why Art Matters).

Programme:

Lanta Davis explores this in her book Becoming by Beholding: The Power of Imagination in Spiritual Formation. She is Professor of Humanities and Literature at Indiana Wesleyan University, and I’m delighted to have her join me to discuss her book and explore imaginative discipleship with me.

We dive into the historical roots of Christian imagination from icons to cathedrals to medieval bestiaries, and what they can teach us today.

Lanta Davis’ website: https://www.lantadavis.com

Buy Becoming by Beholding: Eden.co.uk, Baker Academic, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com

Follow Imaginative Discipleship

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imaginative.discipleship

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imaginative.discipleship

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@imaginative.discipleship

Timings

00:00 Intro

00:40 Becoming by Beholding

03:31 Why is the imagination important?

09:51 Icons and Seeing Jesus

17:16 Medieval Bestiaries and Wonder

20:45 Sacramental Imagination

24:19 Form Matters: Worship and Space

31:30 Dante and the Virtues

35:11 Modern Authors and Green Shoots

39:48 Contemplating Death

46:11 Practical Practices

If ‘beholding is becoming’, what are you giving your attention to that’s shaping you? What has helped you in your spiritual formation?

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Below is a poem in three movements from a time when I was wrestling with a deep sense of uncertainty around my faith — whatever your beliefs, I hope the theme of internal conflict will resonate on some level.

Bigger on the Inside includes a few different strands — written essays, Imaginative Discipleship podcast episodes, and occasional poetry. You can choose which sections you follow, depending on what’s most helpful to you, by updating your choices in your account settings.

Wrestling in the storm

1. Faith

A leap in the dark
A lover’s kiss
Betting my life on eternity’s stakes
Questioning obedience
Seeking understanding
A quest
A pilgrimage
A journey and a gift
Empty hands lifted up

Child-like hope
Adult-like perseverance
Keeping steady in life’s storms
Beyond reason yet reasonable
Where intellect gives way to relationship
Where thinking gives way to trusting
Where wondering gives rise to loving

Some say it’s madness
A delusion — illusion — epistemological confusion
But I find in it sanity
Some say intellectual suicide
I say death and rebirth
Giving up and gaining
A recognition of my limits
A receiving of the divine
The substance of things hoped for
The evidence of things not seen

A mystery
Fragile and unbreakable
Doubtful and certain
Individual and communal
The dark night of the soul
And shining cloud of witnesses

Not of myself
So that no-one can boast
A seed implanted
A signpost heavenward

Life.

2. Doubt

The storms come
And what I thought rock turns to sand
My house crumbles
If the foundations be destroyed
Who can stand?

Hope seems wishful thinking
Community seems confirmation bias
Certainty seems foolishness
Belief seems blindness
Where has my confidence gone,
Faded away like cut grass?

I oscillate — vacillate — hovering
Tossed with every wind
Between belief and despair
Deconstruction and reconstruction
Trusting and doubting

So many questions:
Is this real?
Is this true?
Is this good?

I cry out in the storm:

I believe, help my unbelief!

3. Calm

I think I believe, though I’m not always sure I do.

Two tunes overlap, clashing, competing
If I focus, one resolves
But I still hear the other
Rising to drown out the first.

Living cross-pressured
Caught in the multiverse of meaning
The universes next door
Colliding with my own.

Faith and doubt
Optimism and nihilism
Humanisms secular and sacred
Materialist ‘nothing buttery’
A universe of blind pitiless indifference
Realities objective or constructed.

But the mystery of existence
Seems too great a gift to have no-one to thank for

And the beauty of the Lamb
The self-giving one, dying and rising
Seems too good to be untrue.

So I might be wrong
But for today
I still choose to believe

No AI was used in the writing of this poem.

I’m more settled in my convictions currently, but I know what it’s like to feel tossed and turned between different viewpoints. If you’ve been through similar times of uncertainty and change in your beliefs, what was it like for you? Have you come through the storm yet, and how did you change along the way?

Recently I was struck by the relevance of Madeline L’Engle’s classic science fiction novel, A Wrinkle in Time, to the issue of AI. The book recently got a boost in attention by the references to it in season 5 of Stranger Things, with Holly Wheeler and friends using its ideas of Camazotz and the Black Thing to make sense of held captive under the control of the evil Vecna.

The novel’s themes of individuality and conformity seem to me prophetically relevant to a time when the misuse and overuse of AI threatens to swap human creativity with AI slop. What can we learn?

The power of the Black Thing

In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murray and her precocious younger brother Charles Wallace travel through time and space in search of their father. They arrive on the dark planet of Camazotz which is under the power of the Black Thing. Everyone there operate in robotic, society-wise conformity, under the power of IT, a disembodied brain with telepathic powers:

As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers.

Charles Wallace thinks that he is clever enough and strong enough to enter IT’s influence to rescue his father without becoming controlled by it. But his overconfidence is his undoing. He becomes enslaved to IT.

Meg Murray escapes but to rescue Charles Wallace, she must go back to confront IT. It’s her love for her brother, embodied and human, that is able to rescue him.

Is AI like the evil IT?

AI can be a powerfully useful tool, but when it comes to mass popular adoption of generative AI, I’m unconvinced that the benefits outweigh the costs. But I keep using it from time to time myself, thinking that I am clever enough and strong enough to enter AI’s influence without becoming controlled by it… Oh. Wait.

So I wonder. As much as I like to think I can use AI discerningly, am I fooling myself like Charles Wallace, overconfident in my own abilities?

Part of the danger of AI is its blandness, the lack of obvious errors and flaws. In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg is given “the gift of her faults”:

“Meg, I give you your faults.”

“My faults!” Meg cried.

“Your faults.”

“But I’m always trying to get rid of my faults!”

“Yes,” Mrs. Whatsit said. “However, I think you’ll find they’ll come in very handy…”
― Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

Our imperfections make us individual and human. I’m talking here in a creative sense rather than a moral sense – moral goodness accentuates, rather than diminishes, our uniqueness. But the pseudo-correctness of AI irons out our individuality.

Rescued by embodied connection

So as a cautious AI-experimenter, rather than outright AI-rejecter, the danger of becoming captive to AI like IT, like the Black Thing is there.

But if I am going too far, I hope like Charles Wallace I’ll have friends and family who can pull me out, through embodied love and connection.

It’s by being human in community, through conversation, through the awkward, inconvenient, glorious business of doing life with other sinners, that we truly grow and can guard ourselves against the worst effects of AI.

The awkwardness of community

Someone said that one of the advantages of an AI chatbot is that you can share anything with it without judgment. But shouldn’t that be what we do as human beings in community, especially among those of us as Christians seeking to live as the church? Not being non-judgmental to the degree that we never challenge one another in unhealthy behaviours (and for those of us who are Christians, in what we understand from the Bible to be sin). But in giving one another space to be heard and supported without fear, and when we need to be challenged, to receive that from people who genuinely care for us.

In an age of isolation and disembodiment, in a time when technology threatens more than ever what C. S. Lewis called the “abolition of man”, let’s live in ways that show the best of what it means to be human in community together, with real communication, real relationships, real love.

Is AI a blandness-engine? Or do you think it can enhance creativity? Should I throw out AI from my life altogether, or am I being too cautious? Let me know what you think!

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Side note: What should we tell our kids about AI?

Tomorrow evening I’m going to be speaking to a youth group about AI at a church in Cardiff, and how engage wisely with it (or not).

While the AI-skeptical side of me is tempted to just tell them to flee from it, so that their developing minds can grow their own creativity and critical thinking first, I don’t think that’s actually the most helpful advice – not least because if I was a teenager, having an adult tell me not to do something would be a pretty big encouragement to carry on with that thing or to try it out!

So I’m going to try to give some ways of applying the ideas of the image of God and of idolatry in a way that can help them discern when it is harmful, and when it might be helpful. Hopefully it will give them some good things to think about!

My kids are 8, 6 and 3 years old, so not quite old enough for me to have to navigate this with them yet - though I’ll need to tackle the question of AI with them soon enough. If you’re a parent or teacher, how have you approached this?

• How the "knowledge as information" paradigm cuts us off from reality

• Michael Polanyi's concept of subsidiary-focal integration

• Why imagination is essential to all knowing (including science!)

• The relationship between attention, love, and knowledge

• How artful knowing can help us navigate crises of faith

• The doctrine of creation and wonder in the ordinary

• Re-enchantment vs. the “lively real”

• Comparing Esther's work with Iain McGilchrist’s brain hemisphere approach

Whether you're wrestling with doubt, seeking deeper understanding, or simply curious about how we know what we know, this conversation offers profound insights into making contact with reality.

Also available to watch on YouTube:

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction & Opening Reflections

2:43 - Welcoming Esther Meek

4:23 - How did Esther come to philosophy?

8:35 - On navigating crises of faith

13:33 - How Polanyi helps us

17:32 - Subsidiary focal integration

20:57 - Attention, love and knowledge

29:23 - Is re-enchantment helpful?

42:15 - The creativity of logic

49:16 - Imagination and reason - one form of knowing?

53:33 - Imagination as a point of integration

57:02 - Practicing artful attention

1:02:09 - Concluding reflections

Books Mentioned

• Doorway to Artistry - Esther Lightcap Meek

• Longing to Know - Esther Lightcap Meek

• Loving to Know - Esther Lightcap Meek

• A Little Manual of Knowing - Esther Lightcap Meek

• Personal Knowledge - Michael Polanyi

• The Master and His Emissary - Iain McGilchrist

• The Matter with Things - Iain McGilchrist

• Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder

Connect with Esther Meek

https://www.estherlightcapmeek.com

https://facebook.com/estherlightcapmeek

https://twitter.com/esther_l_meek

https://instagram.com/estherlightcapmeek

Also mentioned

Hello and a special welcome to recent subscribers! The launch of season 2 of the Imaginative Discipleship podcast with my interview with Malcolm Guite has brought in a lot of new people. I hope you enjoy my written articles as much as the podcasts! And if you’ve not checked it out yet you can find it here:

But today I want to look back on one of my absolute highlights of 2025, which was participating in the C. S. Lewis International Interdisciplinary Conference in Romania. It also helps to serve as an introduction to the different threads of my interests – literature, imagination and Christian discipleship, from academic, popular and pastoral angles.

Just after the conference came the sad news that one of the speakers, James Como, had passed away — read on for my tribute to him below.

Why I went to the conference

Currently I’m doing the Growing Churches Programme with Wales Leadership Forum part-time to help me grow as an evangelist and cultural apologist here in Wales, alongside my freelance writing and editing.

The conference itself is multi-threaded, with academic, creative and community aspects to it. So it brought together multiple threads in my own interests and sense of calling, including academic, creative and Christian apologetics strands.

It’s a while since I was fully engaged in the world of academia – I did my English Literature MA, in which I focused on children’s literature and medievalism, especially Tolkien, Lewis and T H White, all the way back in 2010–11, and last gave an academic conference paper at the The Child and the Book conference in Cambridge all the way back in 2012(!). But I have very much remained engaged in thinking about Lewis and the Inklings, children’s literature, and Christian apologetics in more informal ways through the years.

C. S. Lewis has also figured into my freelance editing work – one of my projects earlier this year was editing Other Watchful Dragons: C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and Cross-Cultural Apologetics by Jonathan M Parker (Wipf & Stock, out now - more on this soon!), which was a real delight to work on, as well as helpful for sharpening my understanding of the potential of narrative and imaginative apologetics!

Lewis’s staggering levels of polymath genius across academia, creative writing and Christian apologetics is both daunting and inspiring, and while I don’t dare aspire to ever be a “new C. S. Lewis” I hope that my mix of intellectual, creative and apologetics activities can in some way draw on his example, as befits my own modest gifts and moment in history.

The Romanian connection

You might wonder why an international C. S. Lewis conference is held in Romania – what’s the link? One of the fascinating aspects of the conference for me was discovering the strength of the local C. S. Lewis & Kindred Spirits Society. Much of the credit for the conference and the local interest in Lewis lies with organiser Denise Vasiliu, who has worked over many years to establish the event as a biannual fixture.

But she was planting in well-prepared cultural soil: Romanian Christians had read Lewis in secret during the Communist era, and Romanian readers found in the White Witch’s regime of spies and secret police a powerful resonance with their own experience.

In attendance at the conference was Teodora Ghiviriga, now an associate professor at the University of Alexandru Ioan Cuza in Iaşi, who had studied English and Romanian in the 1980s in the last days of the Communist regime. As a student, she had gone to the British Consul to ask for English books to read, and one of those she was given and read was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She gave it to one of her professors enthusiastically, who read it and who (if I remember the story correctly) went on to translate several of the Narnia books into Romanian – and who was herself present at the conference.

Conference highlights

Malcolm Guite - a poet in Narnia

My journey to the conference began auspiciously, ending up sat in the row in front of the wonderful poet Malcolm Guite.

Guite delivered one of my conference highlights with a epic poem retelling of parts of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, written from the perspective of a Narnian court poet, which was homework he set for his school pupils as a teacher in the 1980s. (Perhaps when Malcolm has finished his Arthuriad, he can complete his Narnian poetic cycle ready for Lewis’s works to go out of copyright in 2034 - less than a decade to go now!)

You can watch him read some of his lost Narnia poem on YouTube:

Lewis’s Christian apologetics, Wales and publishing

Another talk I found particularly interesting was Dr Paul E. Michelson’s plenary about C. S. Lewis’s Christian apologetics, focusing on a lecture he gave on 1st April, 1945 to a conference for Church in Wales youth leaders and junior clergy in Carmarthen, Wales. The essay is collected in God in the Dock (published 1970) and while I’m sure I’ve read it before, realising the Welsh context piqued my interest particularly.

One point from Lewis’s lecture that Dr Michelson did draw out that I found interesting as an editor and publisher was Lewis’s suggestion about the apologetic need for books from an implicitly Christian perspective about everything:

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects with their Christianity latent… The first step to the reconversion of this country is a series, produced by Christians, which can beat the Penguin and the Thinkers Library on their own ground. Its Christianity would have to be latent, not explicit: and of course its science perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interest of apologetics would be sin and folly.

Part of my editorial grid for books when working as Publishing Director for IVP Books UK was precisely for “Christian books about everything”, though market realities make it harder for Christian books to break out of their niche than I would like. But I do think this is a genuine need and one that continues to be under-served.

And I think the challenge for me as a writer and sometime Christian cultural apologist is to make sure that I don’t spend too much time talking about Christianity, so much as engaging with all kinds of topics from a Christian perspective.

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Creative and community threads

Another aspect of the conference I particularly appreciated was the focus not just on ideas, but on creativity and community. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson set a really positive tone early on by reminding us to not just see one another, and particularly the more distinguished speakers, as ‘resources’ to be mined for ideas and connections, but as people. The friendly, collegiate atmosphere and all the fascinating people and conversations I had were just so rich and encouraging. I daren’t start naming names because I’m sure to miss off people I loved conversing with, but everyone was a real delight to meet and begin to get to know.

Actually, I will mention one name, which is Owen A. Barfield, the grandson of Owen Barfield, member of the Inklings and friend of Tolkien and Lewis, whose ideas about language and imagination deeply influenced them. I’ve read Barfield’s Poetic Diction and Saving the Appearances and they were instrumental in moving me towards a sacramental, participatory view of symbols and reality. So it was fascinating to meet the younger Barfield, for whom the great thinker and writer was simply “Grandfather”, and who in adult life has stepped up to steward his grandfather’s legacy with care.

The conference also included an art exhibition, creative performances, poetry, music and more.

One of the plenary sessions involved a discussion of different people’s experiences of combining different types of work, such as academic and creative, and how these might form parts of one unified calling. For me, as I think through how to combine creativity, cultural engagement, Christian thinking and apologetics, this was a valuable discussion. And my heart was lifted by all the rich forms of creativity on display through the conference, especially the final concert on the Friday evening.

My contributions

My paper was Of Man’s First Disobedience: Childhood, maturity and the Fall in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

I explored the similarities between Lewis and Pullman as writers in the Romantic tradition, especially in their high view of imagination, while also the fundamental religious divide between Lewis’s Christianity and Pullman’s secular humanism, and how that plays out in their treatment of themes of temptation and Fall, especially drawing on Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as Genesis.

The paper seemed well-received and I hope to share an adapted version of it here on my newsletter in due course!

I also enjoyed the opportunity to share some of my creative work as a poet in the open mic sessions on the Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, including my poem ‘Bigger on the Inside’ which you can read here:

Remembering James Como

A shadow was cast in the wake of the conference with the news that James Como, one of the plenary speakers and a founding member of the New York C. S. Lewis society, had passed away in Bucharest on his journey back home.

Como had spoken eloquently on the last day of the conference about C. S. Lewis’s Great Conversation, emphasising the towering genius of Lewis’s polyphonic voice, being outstanding as a scholar, as a storyteller and as a Christian apologist. Como identified three melodic lines in Lewis’s work, what he called the militant, marvellous and mystical, which were in constant conversation.

Como argued that Lewis’s mysticism is often overlooked, and that as much as Lewis delighted in quick-witted debate and cold-blooded reason, he was also a mystic, “from the depths of his soul to the heights of heaven”.

One of my abiding regrets of the conference will be that I didn’t get round to talking to Como personally, who was clearly a brilliant mind himself (there were lots of fascinating people to meet!) Now I’ll have to wait until I reach Aslan’s country to engage with Como in the ‘great conversation’ flowing out of C. S. Lewis’s life and works.

What will I take away from the conference?

The conference was very enriching intellectually, spiritually and creatively. I have no doubt that seeds planted at the conference will bear fruit: intellectually, creatively, and through friendships started or deepened.

Particularly helpful for me was seeing C. S. Lewis’s multifaceted achievements. While I am no Lewis, I’m finding the shape of my own multisided calling, and it was wonderful to be in a place where different threads in my sense of calling – intellectual, creativity, apologetics – converged so naturally.

What fruit will grow from it? New ideas and inspiration, certainly; ongoing relationships, hopefully. But only time - and the Spirit’s working – will tell.

Edited to add: Join me for an online Galahad and the Grail book group, starting Monday April 13th:

Sign up for book group

Welcome to season 2 of the Imaginative Discipleship podcast - exploring meaning, imagination and transformation for Christians and the spiritually curious!

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr Malcolm Guite, a poet, priest and scholar who has thought deeply about the imagination. Discover how imagination can unveil our sight to see reality more deeply.

Guite is also soon to release the first book in Merlin’s Isle, his epic poetic retelling of the story of King Arthur. We got into all sorts of interesting topics from dinosaurs to Doctor Who to dragons.

So listen in and let me know what you think in the comments!

Episode 2 is also now available:

This episode is also available to watch on the Imaginative Discipleship YouTube channel.

Subscribe now

Malcolm Guite

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MalcolmGuitespell

• Twitter: twitter.com/malcolmguite

• Facebook: facebook.com/malcolm.guite

• Blog: malcolmguite.wordpress.com/blog

Malcolm Guite’s books discussed

• Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God - Canterbury Press (UK); Amazon.com

• Merlin’s Isle Book 1: Galahad and the Grail, illustrated by Stephen Crotts - Preorder from the Rabbit Room (US); Preorder from Canterbury Press (UK)

• Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination - Routledge

Arthurian literature and criticism

• Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

• Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae

• Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King

• T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King

• Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table

• The Inklings and Arthur, edited by Sørina Higgins

Lecture Podcast—English L'Abri

King Arthur and the Dangerous Dream of Christendom (Caleb Woodbridge, Writer & Editor)

According to the legends, King Arthur was the Christian king of a Christian kingdom. But as the story has been retold in a post-Christendom culture, that's often been radically reinvented. How can the legend of Arthur help us think about the tension between the two cities, the city of man and city of God? How does the Arthurian mythos give us an index o…

Listen now

2 years ago · 1 like

Also mentioned

• C S Lewis - Surprised by Joy, The Chronicles of Narnia, “Three Ways of Writing for Children”

• G K Chesterton - The Ballad of the White Horse

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Biographia Literaria

• James K A Smith - Desiring the Kingdom

• Esther Meek - Loving to Know; The Mother’s Smile

• Sir James Frazer - The Golden Bough

Episode timings

0:00 Intro

0:42 Welcome to Imaginative Discipleship Season 2

2:36 Welcoming Malcolm Guite

6:18 Imagination as Organ of Meaning

10:23 Creativity and the Image of God

16:39 Discerning True Imagination

23:25 Baptized Imagination and Death to Self

27:56 Chronicles of Narnia and Doctor Who

31:41 Epic Poetry, Merlin's Isle and Mythopoetic Storytelling

41:17 Favourite Arthurian Tellings

55:13 Arthur, England, and National Identity

59:32 Retelling Arthurian Legend

1:01:22 The Growing Imaginative Resistance

Normally I like to come at philosophical and theological questions sideways via story and culture, but I don’t mind sometimes engaging with big questions directly, and that’s just what I did with this debate:

Back in November, I debated John Richards, head of Atheism UK on the question of “Do we need God for ultimate meaning?” (Which was a bit of a surprise on the day, since due to a miscommunication, I’d thought I was going to be debating “Is belief in God rational?” – nothing like keeping me on my toes!)

Now I tend to prefer conversations over debates – I enjoy the intellectual back-and-forth of a debate, but I find it often sets up an oppositional framework of “winning” and “losing” that isn’t necessarily the best frame for searching for truth together. But I certainly think there is a place for debates, where people set out the best case they can for their viewpoint, as long as they are approached with intellectual integrity.

I was impressed by the audience of school pupils who gave up their lunchtime to watch the debate, and who asked thoughtful, challenging questions. It’s great to see a new generation engaging these big questions!

How did I do? Well, why not watch the debate and decide for yourself!

You can watch it on YouTube (above), download the podcast audio from Premier, or find it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I’d love to hear your perspective on the debate, whichever side of it you come down on. Perhaps we can pick up and continue some of the threads in the comments below…

Leave a comment

Quick pop culture thoughts

• I’m currently enjoying Pluribus on Apple TV, an intriguing sci-fi show about Carol Sturka, one of the few people on the planet who doesn’t get absorbed into a peaceful, happy hive-mind, and who sets about trying to undo whatever it is that happened to the human race. It’s a smart, deliberately paced show from Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad fame.

• The new Knives Out movie Wake Up, Dead Man is really good and richly engaged with questions of religion, power, belief and grace! My wife and I saw it together in the cinema and found it surprisingly emotionally resonant. My friend-from-Hutchmoot Houston Coley wrote a great essay exploring these themes:

Houston, We Have a Problem

Rian Johnson's 'Knives Out' Movies Are All About God

Spoilers for all three ‘Knives Out’ mysteries abound below. This essay was originally posted on my Letterboxd…

Read more

5 months ago · 13 likes · H. Coley

Earlier this year, I took part in the UK Moot creative community’s Pass the Piece, where participants created a piece of art (whether visual art or poetry or prose or music…) to pass it on for someone else to respond to (as well as receiving someone else’s piece for our own creative response).

I came up with a poem that riffs on the title of this newsletter and my love of Narnia and Doctor Who, which the wonderfully-talented author and storyteller Amy Scott Robinson wrote a response to. Here are both poems – I hope you enjoy them, and thanks to Amy for permission to share hers publicly here!

Pass the Piece

Bigger on the Inside

A wardrobe is a snowy kingdom
And a police box is a time machine

A book is an adventure in time and space
A journey to other realms and minds

A story is a cosmos incognito
A view of the universe shared

A word is an open doorway
To wonders and worlds unknown

A poem is thing with dimensions
Hidden and deep beyond

A metaphor is a myth in miniature
An explosion of meaning that blooms

A person is a story that’s living
Containing thoughts and dreams immense

A kindness is an incarnation
Of the love that moves sun and stars

A world is a signpost
To things unseen

A prayer a hinge
On which history turns

A loaf of bread is the body
Broken so we might be unbroken

A cup of wine is the blood is the life
Is the love at the heart of the universe.

by Caleb Woodbridge

A word is a doorway (and a prayer is a hinge)

And he replied, ‘Join me
in this metaphor. It’s a myth in miniature,
a parable’s seed,’

and he pointed to the plate on the table.
Looking, she saw with his eyes:
starving wanderers
manna from heaven
five thousand hungry children
twelve baskets left over
a broken body
two at Emmaus starting to their feet.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘even the dogs will eat
the crumbs that the children brush off.’

She looked into the eyes of the word,
and he, with the world in his sights
smiled back and opened the door.

by Amy Scott Robinson
(www.amyscottrobinson.com)

Reminder: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at 75 livestream, Thursday 8pm

Join me for a book group style livestream discussing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! If you’d like to take part in the discussion live on YouTube, register below and I’ll send details of how to join the call:

Register

Prayer letter

I plan to send out my first prayer letter / ministry update this weekend to supporters of my work with the Growing Churches Programme, doing Christian creative cultural engagement in Wales.

If this is of interest to you, please sign up for it separately at newsletter.calebwoodbridge.com.

I’m excited that I’ll be off to the C.S. Lewis International Interdisciplinary Conference next month! I also took part in a Discarded Image reading group on YouTube recently, discussing Lewis’s book about the Medieval worldview. I’m also hosting an online Narnia book group soon – register here. Or scroll down for more details of each.

But first, my celebration of 75 years of Narnia!

My adventures in Narnia

Today marks 75 years since the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, published 16th October 1950.

I was only about five years old when I first stepped through the wardrobe into Narnia. Not literally, of course. But when my mum first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to me, something happened to shape my imagination indelibly.

Under Narnia’s spell

I was captured by this amazing world of talking beasts and mythical creatures, by the possibility of as a child stumbling into a magical land and becoming a king there.

I was entranced by the character of Aslan, “not safe, but good”.

I was stirred by the stories, from Aslan’s sacrifice for Edmund in the first book, all the way through to the heroic, helpless last stand of Tirian, Jill and Eustace in The Last Battle, only to be alive again in Aslan’s country: the term time was over, the holidays begun, indeed.

That melancholic sense of fighting, in Tolkien’s words, “the long defeat” of history, combined with fairy-tale, eucatastrophic hope impressed itself on my young mind powerfully.

Longing for Narnia

I longed to visit Narnia for myself. I checked the back of my own wardrobe, looked for hidden portals.

There was one particular branch that came down in my infant school playground in some winds, with a split in two. Pointing downwards to the ground, it made an inverted ‘V’ like a natural archway: just the thing that felt as if it should be one of the ‘chinks and chasms’ that Aslan hinted connected our world to Narnia, that were almost gone but not quite.

I knew Narnia was ‘just’ a story, but as a young Christian, I prayed fervently to God that somehow he would make Narnia real so that I could visit it. I knew from the Bible that God had created this world with a word: if I asked nicely enough, surely God could recreate Narnia based on C. S. Lewis’s words?

He didn’t oblige me, of course. Neither did the trees answer me, or the robins in my garden speak to me, or dwarves or dryads appear amongst the Welsh hills where I grew up, as believable as it seemed that they could be hiding there.

Later, I would encounter Lewis’s ‘argument from desire’, that if I have a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, it shows I was made for another world. And maybe one day, in the New Creation, in Aslan’s Country, we will indeed get to experience ‘the real Narnia’: not a literal recreation but the source of those desires, where we are restored to perfect harmony with woods and waters, beasts and spirits, and above all God himself. But not now, not yet.

When I was a little older, I started writing my own retelling of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which I became part of the story through the power of an enchanted Blue Peter badge. As I grew, I started writing stories of my own that took less direct inspiration from Narnia: tales of magic and other worlds, of good versus evil and of courage and heroism.

Deeper magic

I also began to realise one of the dimensions in which Narnia is ‘bigger on the inside’: the Christian themes and imagery that Lewis embedded in the story.

Some readers have felt short-changed by discovering Aslan is a ‘magic Jesus lion’, and I can sympathise with that feeling. I remember feeling a perhaps analogous sense of disappointment as a kid when I read an article in a newspaper that I read in my local library that pointed out some of the implied Blairite politics of the Harry Potter series – not that I necessarily had a coherent political disagreement with Rowling’s politics, but I felt that somehow the magic and escapism was ‘sullied’ by these real-world concerns.

Of course, by now I’m much more aware of how all fiction is inevitably embedded within philosophical and often political outlooks. But I can understand having some sense of underhandedness when the penny drops about aspects of a story that the author was “up to” without it previously being obvious.

But for me, Lewis’s defence that Aslan is not allegory, but ‘supposal’, a speculation about how God might become incarnate within a world like Narnia, made sense to me as a young Christian with an active imagination and love of speculative fiction.

For me, the flavour of Christianity added “deeper magic”, a grandeur and substance. to the Narnia books; Narnia, in turn, brought to life aspects of the Christian life that might have been difficult or abstract for me to grasp, such as God’s holiness, with the giddy mix wonder and fear that came with meeting Aslan a worthy preparation for grasping the beauty and fullness of awe that come in encountering God.

A baptised imagination

Having encountered a deeply-felt sense of the wild beauty and goodness of God through Narnia helped inoculate me against some of the attacks on Christianity I would encounter growing up.

I read and enjoyed Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels though with diminishing pleasure as his atheistic subtext became text, with what seems to me a blundering note of preachiness far worse than any of Lewis’s far more minor crimes against subtlety.

The figure of “The Authority”, the version of God that Pullman rejected as austere, dusty, and tired, bore little resemblance to Aslan, or indeed to Jesus, and so the critique fell short: I didn’t believe in the God that Pullman didn’t believe in either.

And perhaps that’s one of the reasons Pullman objected to Narnia so deeply, for the crime of “baptising the imaginations” of children with stories that might prime young minds to receive the Christian faith as beautiful and true.

A doorway into literature

As I grew older, Narnia became something more: a doorway into myth and literature. I followed Lewis and Tolkien upstream into the worlds of Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, and as I studied literature at university, to Milton, Spenser, Mallory, de Lorris, Dante, Boethius and others.

I loved reading as a child, as I still do, even with my brain at least half-addled by the age of smartphones and social media; I’m sure if it hadn’t been Narnia then other stories would have filled the gap and drawn me in, though my path and my interests would undoubtedly have been different.

But Narnia was my first love, the first children’s novels I read, beyond picture books and simple tales, that first enchanted me.

An enlargement of self

After all, that’s the power of good storytelling: the tale is not only bigger on the inside than the out, like the wardrobe to Narnia or the stable door to Aslan’s country.

But good stories also help make you “bigger on the inside”, inculcating knowledge, curiosity and courage.

It was in Narnia that I learned what it was like to slay a wolf and clean my sword after; to submit to the Lion’s claws as he performed my undragoning; to go cheerfully to a last battle with no hope of victory; to seek after the sweet light of the Utter East.

Handing on to the next generation

And now as a parent, I recently got to experience them in a new way again, reading them aloud to my daughter, who is now eight years old. She is quiet and thoughtful, taking things to heart and keeping her own counsel, so whether they have had the same impact on her as they did on me at her age remains to be seen. But she has heard these stories read to her with love and delight, and our times reading together are precious.

Along the way, many were the times when I had to hold back my tears as I reread them, from the death and rebirth of Aslan, to the singing of Narnia into being, to the end of Narnia and the beginning of the great story that goes on forever.

I hand on Narnia with joy, and hope that a new generation will get at least some measure of the same richness out of them as I did.

And perhaps too it will be a doorway into bigger worlds: those of literature and myth, yes, but also into what Lewis saw as the Great Story, the true myth of Christ born, crucified and risen again.

What does Narnia mean to you? Did it inspire your imagination, and were the Christian themes a highlight or a turn-off for you? Let me know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Join me for a 75th Narnia anniversary livestream – Thursday 30th October, 8-9pm GMT

I’m going to try something new! I’ll be running an online book group style chat about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in two weeks’ time.

I’m planning to host a livestream to discuss The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to mark its 75th anniversary. All perspectives welcome, whether critical or celebratory, Christian or from other belief perspectives, as long as you engage respectfully in the discussion.

The discussion will be live-streamed on my Imaginative Discipleship YouTube channel and available publicly afterwards. If you would like to take part in the discussion, or just to register your interest as a viewer, please fill out the form:

Register here

Meet me at the C S Lewis International Interdisciplinary Conference in November

I’m excited to have had a paper on childhood, maturity and the Fall in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials accepted for this C. S. Lewis conference in Iași, Romania next month — and some creative contributions poetry-wise too! Off to Romania next month for 19-22 November.

Find out more

Watch me talking Lewis and medievalism on YouTube

I am Boy

I am Boy
I am Two
The world is mine
I’m sure it’s true
Daddy sometimes forgets who’s Boss
And Mummy is a total loss

Sometimes she will stop me from
Jumping in muddy puddles
But she is good for snuggly cuddles
And her milk is something special
When she can be prevailed upon
With my cries
And imprecations

I like dinosaurs
OMP OMP OMP
Listen to my might
RAAAR
Hear me from near and far

I am Bold
I am Strong
Except when I meet
A worm that’s long
AAAAAAH!
Why couldn’t my parents see
That thing might have eaten me?

I like Snacks
And beans on toast
Jam and Cookies
And when I’m in the mood
Bits of Mummy and Daddy’s food
And when I want something more
I pick some bits up from the floor
Yum!

Mum and Dad, poor simple fools
Often don’t know what I choose
So I have to point and scream
To demand breakfast ice cream
Sometimes they can be quite thick
Persistence sometimes does the trick
But other times they just don’t get it
So I have no choice
But to reprimand
Their failure
To meet my demand
AAAAAAAH

I am Boy
I am Two
I put stones in your shoe
My experiments empirical
Get spoiled by interference parental

I like Trains
CHOO CHOO CHOO
I love to run and play with you
I must insist you don’t get distracted
By work or friends or phones or chores
By adult conversations or other bores

I am Boy
I am Two
All that I ask of you
My parents
Is your total attention
Focus in every dimension
Your unbounded love and affection

I am Boy
I’m never tired
I am sometimes very wired

I am Boy
I don’t need bed
I’m not sleepy
I’m a dinosaur
Listen to
My mighty…
SNORE

Over the last few days, I’ve been trying to process the awful news of the shooting of Charlie Kirk. I was only peripherally aware of him until now, and while my politics are very different, I pray for his wife, kids and wider family and friends as they come to terms with a shocking loss.

For anyone to be shot for their political beliefs and campaigning is an ugly, evil thing. Each act of political violence further frays the fabric of the West’s rapidly degrading democratic culture. It turns up the temperature in the already overheated culture wars, exacerbating the political climate crisis of deepening polarisation.

But what can we do about it? What kind of imagination do we need to create a better politics, a better conversation?

Quick note: I hadn’t intended to take a summer break from the newsletter, but it turned out that way between juggling my freelance editing work with looking after the kids in the holidays!

I’ve got some new posts underway on my usual themes of stories, culture, imagination and faith, but I felt I needed to comment on the present moment, especially since I am engaged in initiatives that I hope have some small role to play in addressing polarisation.

Faith and political division

I am a Christian, and so Charlie Kirk is a brother in Christ to me, whatever our deep differences of political outlook. There are some points where we overlapped in beliefs, many others where we would have differed profoundly.

The UK and US are quite different political worlds, so I will happily grant that my viewpoint is limited to speak to the details of Kirk’s politics. But I would see a clear difference in his approach to race, immigration, nationalism and other issues to what I would understand a Christian approach to imply. For example, Kirk rejected of empathy as “a made-up, New Age term”.

However, I know that this isn’t as simple a debate as it sounds: Kirk distinguished sympathy from empathy, echoing Joe Rigney’s argument in The Sin of Empathy, and a lot depends on nuanced definitions rather than a simplistic “uncaring anti-empaths vs morally righteous empaths” that it might be tempting to reduce it to. But I would still see Kirk’s terms as ultimately unhelpful and divisive. I discussed this topic on my podcast episode on Imagination and Empathy:

However, while I’ve only seen a little of Kirk’s content but it seems his was genuinely committed to persuasion, debate and engagement. Despite our differences, I can see I would have been able to have a robust and civil discussion with Kirk.

But now, of course, that possibility is closed off by Kirk’s murder. Dialogue is shut down in favour of violence, the ultimate “shut up!”

As I write, the motives of Tyler Robinson, the alleged shooter are disputed: it’s not clear yet whether he may have been motivated by farther-right extremism, or because of objecting to Kirk from a left-progressive viewpoint, as people try to interpret the memes he referred to and assess claims he was in a relationship with a transgender roommate.

Whatever the full story turns out to be, it seems that he was “very online”, and this likely played a role in some form of radicalisation. While we don’t know the motives and psychology, it seems to me the deep polarisation in US politics and Western culture more widely must have contributed to creating a climate where this kind of evil could seem plausible and attractive to a troubled young man.

The problem of polarisation

There are polarisation dynamics at play that emerge both from left and right wing, and also from the perverse incentives of our media ecosystem and online algorithms to drive engagement at all costs.

Social media prioritises the loudest, most extreme voices, because they provoke more reaction, more clicks, more revenue. Tech companies optimise for addiction, sending people down dark rabbit holes of extreme content. Tech journalist Charles Arthur calls it “Social Warming” by analogy with “Global Warming” — but how far can we turn up the temperature before peaceful democratic debate and politics become impossible?

The UK is seeing a turn away from established parties and institutions and towards the populist right, much as the US saw with Trump. We can see this shift in populist party Reform’s surge ahead in the polls, and in the large demonstration in London this weekend.

The temptation for the left and for traditional institutions is to increase the moral disapproval, the fact-checking, the finger-wagging. Unfortunately this tends to be counter-productive. Suppressing discussion of controversial issues just makes them fester. What then can be done?

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No easy answers

There are no easy answers to our political problems: there are difficult economic and social challenges concerning growth, population, immigration, and a crisis not just of deep disagreement over what should be done, but also a crisis of confidence in the ability of government to do anything effectively.

Lightning-rod issues like policy around trans are to a significant degree zero-sum: when it comes to bathrooms, women’s sport, self-identification and so on, you have some pretty binary policy choices to make.

Conversation by itself can’t solve our problems. But it perhaps creates the conditions in which solutions can be found.

The necessity of conversation

If there are solutions to be found, then I believe that we can only reach them by turning down the temperature, by depolarising debates so that people of radically different beliefs can actually sit down and talk to one another, human being to human being.

Online life can’t bear the weight of that (at least without radically defanging the algorithms): meaningful dialogue needs in-person, embodied human interaction. Dialogue needs spaces where people can meet with the assumption that the person on the other side of the debate has intelligible, very likely well-meaning, motivations and reasons for their position. You might have something to learn from them, and at the very least, they are a human being who deserves the dignity of being heard, and being responded to with reason and empathy, even if their views are profoundly erroneous, harmful and offensive.

How I’m doing this in my community

I hope it’s not inappropriate for me to discuss these – I don’t want to bandwagon on someone’s death just to plug events I’m running! But I do think it’s important to discuss what building conversation and community can look like in action, so I’m going to talk about what I’m up to.

Estuary Conversations, Treforest

The need for conversation is why I’m so invested in running the Estuary Protocol, a format for conversations designed to bring people together across difference. I’ve been running it monthly in Treforest as a free and friendly space, and while numbers have been small, the quality of conversation has been high.

We need places to practice the art of conversation, of being able to engage well with contrary viewpoints, listening to, learning from, and loving our neighbours. I’ve found Estuary fascinating and stretching as I’ve engaged with different people and their views.

To find out more about the Estuary Protocol and network of groups, visit estuaryhub.com.

The Table, Cardiff

I’m also helping Urban Crofters, a church in Cardiff, with a similar initiative called The Table, which aims to create space for people to connect and talk more deeply (specifically over food, which is an excellent bonus!)

Aimed specifically at 18s to 30s, it’s another version of creating space for community and conversation. If you’re in the right place and age bracket, you can sign up on Meetup.com.

Churches and depolarisation

I also believe depolarisation is something that churches should be modelling. Christians should be united by faith in Christ, across political divides. We should be committed to loving both our neighbours and loving our enemies — and as G. K. Chesterton observed, often these are the same people!

But avoiding division in the church, and between the church and its neighbours, takes effort, especially when there are unhealthy extremes and distortions across the political spectrum that Christian discipleship needs to address. A naive “both sides”-ism will just annoy everyone.

A good starting point is for church leaders to teach how the church’s loyalty to the Gospel is higher than any political commitments, and to take care not to stereotype or demonise other viewpoints, whether that’s “the crazy religious right” or “the godless woke leftists” or whoever it is that you are tempted to despise.

The antidote to social media?

In-person, intentional conversation is in many ways the opposite of Twitter/X.

Conversation is long-form, not careless ragebait.

Conversation puts you across the table from the person who you disagree with, rather than reducing them to an enemy digital avatar within the massively-multiplayer online game that is social media.

Conversation is slow and requires focused attention, rather than the fast-paced, ADHD nature of our reels and feeds and notifications.

Each conversation only makes a small difference. But it does make a difference.

The more meaningful conversations and connections we can make, the more we can perhaps slowly, incrementally, painfully, turn down the heat on our cultural divides, so that our communities can flourish.

What do you think facilitating meaningful conversation across divides can and can’t achieve?

How are you — or could you — contribute to depolarising our cultural divides in your community?

Let me know in the comments below!

It’s been a busy few weeks for me, with a wonderful time at Hutchmoot UK, followed by speaking at Keswick Unconventional combined with our family holiday in Keswick! I’ve barely had time to gather my thoughts or write, though I hope to catch up over the coming weeks.

Recent weeks have had a bit of an AI theme, as my appearance on Premier Unbelievable’s Matters of Life and Death podcast was released, and I ran a packed seminar on ‘Can Christians use AI faithfully?’ at Keswick Unconventional, with some help from the witty and wise . Read on for more details!

Listen to my discussion of AI and Creativity

For a technology that has only recently entered the public consciousness, AI is everywhere. It is useful, maybe even addictive, but can it also be harmful? Should we be concerned, as Christians, as creatives, as human beings, even, at what AI is doing to crafts such as artistry, writing and more? Is it possible to integrate it thoughtfully into our daily lives and work – welcoming the shortcuts it offers – without it gradually degrading our own intrinsic human God-given spark of creativity?

In this episode, I join show hosts John and Tim Wyatt to discuss my manifesto on how to maintain our humanity in the age of AI.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Pocket Casts

My AI Seminar at Keswick Unconventional

It was an honour to speak to a packed and highly engaged crowd of Christians at Keswick about whether we can use AI wisely and well — I encouraged people to think through cautiously and theologically the implications of AI, though stopping short of arguing not to use it at all.

I tried to give some theological “handles” for getting to grips with it, relating to being made in the image of God, our theology of work and of technology, our understanding of sin and the fall in relation to AI, and whether we can ‘redeem’ AI through careful, ethical use.

Some of this is based on what I’ve already written on here, but there was new material that I will adapt into fresh articles soon, I hope!

One cool thing about the seminar was that sign language interpretation was provided and a group of Deaf people were able to listen and participate in the discussions. One of the better use-cases for AI is in technologies that help people with different disabilities, so it’s great to get a wide range of experiences and perspectives!

Several people have pushed me on the question of the ethics of AI — do the issues around plagiarism and the environment mean that it should be a complete no-go, regardless of whether its impacts are positive or negative?

That’s a really important question that I’ve not written about directly yet. I respect the absolute No AI position, but I need to work through my thinking a bit more rigorously. I think there are some nuances here that I need to tease out before I can articulate a clear conclusion, but I recognise the importance of a principled ethical approach.

Let me know what you think in the comments, especially any articles or resources you have found particularly persuasive or helpful!

Leave a comment

Also in my pipeline:

• The final part of my Doctor Who and the Nostalgia Trap analysis

• How A Wrinkle in Time warned us about the dangers of AI, 60 years ahead of time

• Recording new episodes of the Imaginative Discipleship podcast for season 2

• Recommendations for books relating to Wales

• Sharing some of my poetry!

Just a quick preamble… here on Bigger on the Inside, I write about culture and stories from philosophical and spiritual perspectives as a Christian, but hopefully in a way that’s hospitable to readers of all beliefs. Whatever your beliefs or spiritual outlook, I hope that this space is welcoming to you!

This update has more of a faith-based focus so if that’s not your thing don’t worry – I’ll be back to discussing topics like science fiction, AI, creativity and so on soon. But I hope you might be interested in what I’m doing and how my faith informs my perspective.

I’ve also got some speaking engagements coming up on AI and on writing/publishing – keep reading for details!

A new step

I’m excited to share that I’m starting a new chapter in September 2025, as I join the 12-month Growing Churches Programme with the Wales Leadership Forum.

Through this, I’ll be receiving training and support, and developing part-time ministry working alongside my church, Lounge Gospel Community, a “missional community”-based church plant.

I’ll be focused on creative outreach and Christian cultural engagement in Pontypridd and beyond, including seeking opportunities to support and train Christians across churches in the area. I’d love to invite you to support this work.

Here’s a video introducing what I’ll be up to…

Read on to find out how you can stay updated, and for more details on what I’ll be doing.

Stay updated

If you’d like to find out more and support me in what I’ll be doing, please sign up to my supporters newsletter, which I’ll be running separately from this list.

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As well as receiving some funding from WLF, I also need to raise personal financial support of about £8,000 for the year to help fund me on the 12-month programme. If this is something you would consider, please subscribe above to receive details.

I’ll also be continuing with some freelance work to help support me during the programme – and keeping on writing here at Bigger on the Inside as part of my personal engagement with culture.

What will I be doing?

Reaching people with Jesus takes imagination. I’m going to be putting that into practice, and helping others to do the same. Here’s a bit more detail on what that might look like, though I expect the details will evolve along the way!

1. Local Creative Outreach in Pontypridd and beyond

I’m working with Lounge to develop creative outreach opportunities. This might look like Narnia-themed events (making the most of the 75^th anniversary of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!), or maybe hospitality and open discussion groups like Estuary Conversations, which I currently run at Parc Arts in Treforest, or something else as I work through with the church what will best serve the local community.

I also hope to equip others in the church and neighbouring churches in south Wales to step into creative mission, identifying opportunities for engaging creatively with local communities.

2. Exploring and Sharing Creative Outreach

I plan to visit 6–10 creative outreach projects in Wales and beyond, writing up what I learn to share with the wider church, through articles, video content, or podcast episodes. My aim is to encourage and resource others to think differently and boldly about mission in a post-Christian culture.

3. Growing the Hay Festival Outreach

This year I volunteered as a helper with the Hay Festival Outreach, run by Bethesda Church in Hay-on-Wye during the Hay Festival. This year’s Narnia-themed outreach was a great example of creative evangelism, but I’m keen to work with the outreach team to help deepen the cultural engagement of the outreach next year, by curating talks and events that are in the spirit of the festival and engaging with the questions festivalgoers are thinking about.

My background in publishing and networks across the arts and theology world put me in a strong position to build this into something with long-term impact – think a “Hay Faith Fringe” programme to engage in the wider cultural conversation.

Why creative outreach?

The Growing Churches Programme is focused on training evangelists in Wales. If you’re not a Christian (or even if you are!), then “evangelism” might be a word to make you feel nervous, conjuring images of shouty people with megaphones on the street corner.

But what I’m passionate about is creating space for meaningful conversation between Christians and the wider community, building bridges through arts, storytelling and connection.

Our culture is wrestling with not just major environmental and political crises but a deeper, more fundamental meaning crisis. Many people feel lost and hopeless, isolated and lacking in community.

I believe the Christian faith is both true and also powerful to address the cultural challenges we face. It offers hope and a path for spiritual transformation, through the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, that we in our culture desperately need.

But making Christianity meaningful to people, rather than yesterday’s news, requires imagination.

It takes building trust and connection in community, and a genuine commitment to listening as well as speaking.

There’s an important place for disagreement and challenge, of course – the message of Jesus is one that should challenge all of us deeply – but I believe that’s best done in the context of respect and relationship, rather than shouty provocation.

Wales also has a rich culture and heritage, soaked in Christian influence. From the National Eisteddfod which was hosted last year in Pontypridd where I’m living through to contemporary music and poetry and much more, Welsh culture offers many opportunities to engage with life’s big questions.

My aim is to make the Christian story a larger part of the wider cultural conversation in Wales and beyond – not to shout others down, but to respectfully listen and to engage, in order to commend Christianity as meaningful, life-giving and true.

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Say hello if you’re at Hutchmoot UK this week!

Tomorrow (Thursday 10th July) I’ll be off to the Hutchmoot UK faith and creativity conference! It will be my fourth year there — if you are about do say hello and have a chat.

You can read about my experiences there as a first-timer here:

Keswick Unconventional: Seminars on AI and creativity; Writing and publishing

I’m speaking at Keswick Unconventional in the Lake District at the end of the month! I’m doing a seminar on AI and a panel on writing and publishing – if you can make it along, it would be great to see you there.

Created and Creating: Can Christians Use AI Faithfully? Monday 28th July, 3–4.15pm, The Foundry

In this session, Caleb Woodbridge explores how we avoid idolatry, honour the dignity of artistic work, and foster authentic creativity in a world becoming increasingly reliant on generative AI.

Writing and Publishing: What to do with the idea for a book? Tuesday 29th July, 3–4.15pm, The Foundry

A writer (James Cary), an editor and former publisher (Caleb Woodbridge) and special guests give realistic practical advice on how to write books – fiction and non-fiction – edit, publish and promote them.

Reaching 300+ subscribers – thank you for reading!

My subscriber count continues to rise steadily, passing the 300 mark recently – thanks so much for reading! If you appreciate what I’m doing, please do share my newsletter with other people you think might enjoy it.

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Doctor Who is in a weird limbo just at the moment, without any further series officially confirmed, and fans waiting nervously for news from Disney+ and the BBC.

I remember the air of optimism at the 60th anniversary, with Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor, the air of confidence around the Whoniverse and upcoming spin-offs — but now, only 18 months or so on, the only buzz around the show is speculation that it might be cancelled or a new showrunner brought in, with J Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, angling for the job. What a change in a short space of time.

A big part of that is the general contraction of the TV industry and bursting of the streaming bubble. But I believe the quality of the show matters just as much: it’s struggling not just because of the wider media landscape shifting, but because issues with the writing have prevented it from succeeding and resonating with audiences.

What’s gone wrong? We’ll need to go back further than Russell T Davies’ return, to the problems sown during the Chibnall era.

Previously on Bigger on the Inside….

In part one, I traced my delight in and eventually waning enthusiasm for the Doctor’s adventures in time and space across the Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat eras, through to the departure of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out below!

This article has grown in the writing, so this is going to be part two in a series of (at least!) three posts.

On being a critical fan

I’ve found this a tricky article to write. One reason is because I don’t want to be ‘cancelled’ for talking about Doctor Who’s progressivism/“wokeness”. I may well get attacked from both sides in trying to take what I hope is a nuanced and thoughtful position on that question. But engaging with it is pretty inescapable in talking about the show’s recent reception, so I’ll start discussing that later, with more to come in part three — get your tar and feathers ready!

The other is because I’d much rather be enthusing over what I love about Doctor Who than critiquing what I dislike. I’m painfully aware that making television is difficult and complicated, and even when the final result is lacking, it’s the product of blood, sweat, tears and passion by many people. So I’ve generally followed a policy of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it” in terms of reaction to Doctor Who — one of the reasons I’ve been more muted on the subject than you might expect if you know my love of the show!

Fandom can easily turn toxic in having impossible expectations of a beloved franchise, with middle-aged fans grumbling that its latest output can’t make them feel the same magic as when they first encountered it as a child (see also Star Wars and many others). This problem is heightened when you have had exceptional talent working on it, as I think was the case with RTD1 and Steven Moffat’s runs on the show, quibbles and critiques notwithstanding.

That said, I think there are genuine problems with the last few years of Doctor Who. My critique is not out of hatred for the show or contempt for the writers, but passionate out of genuine affection and interest in the show being as good as it can be. At its best, Doctor Who is drama, fun and moral inspiration, even modern myth-making, all for a family audience, and that’s brilliant.

With all that in mind, let’s set the TARDIS for 2018…

Jodi Whittaker and the Chibnall era

I have to admit, I was concerned when Chris Chibnall was announced as the new showrunner. His track record on Torchwood and Doctor Who didn’t fill me with confidence, with episodes ranging from mid at best to mind-boggling ill-conceived at worst (Cyberwoman and that one with the sex gas monster for Torchwood being particular lows).

While Chibnall’s show Broadchurch had been critically acclaimed (I have to admit I never watched it – crime drama isn’t typically my bag), it wasn’t obvious to me how that would translate to success as lead writer on Doctor Who. I don’t want to be unkind or overly critical, because Chibnall had some good instincts, ideas and moments, such as avoiding returning monsters and villains in his first season, and the show is a very complex one to write and produce. It’s also worth noting Jodie Whittaker was wonderfully enthusiastic as the first female incarnation of the Doctor, and I’m fine in principle with a female Doctor.

But one of the challenges for a show like Doctor Who is to keep having stepping-on points for a new wave of fans – of childr

en – while then growing up with them over the next few years, and hopefully keeping them to stick around through it’s next reinvention. It seems that a lot of people turned up to see Jodie Whittaker’s debut, but over her run, lots of them fell away. The wider shift to streaming is part of the picture, but I think there show had its own weaknesses.

I know the era has its defenders, but to me the drop in screenwriting craft, ability to create compelling characters and dramatic arcs, was very noticeable. Chibnall’s first season admirably eschewed returning monsters and villains, but felt rather empty. If he has anything interesting to say through the show, it passed me by. His writing often feels to me like Doctor Who as written by AI — able to ape the surface imagery of the show, but lacking insight or human viewpoint to make a strong emotional connection.

A missing ingredient?

Just to give an example of what I find missing in Chibnall’s writing, and one of the reasons I was concerned when he was announced as the new showrunner: in his Matt Smith-era two-parter The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, the human race comes into conflict with the Silurians, lizard-people from the time of the dinosaurs who want to reclaim earth as their own. The Doctor tries to broker a peace, with negotiations shown in montage, snippets of superficial discussions skimmed over quickly. However, it comes out that one of the human characters kills a Silurian, out of fear and hostility, and negotiations break down.

There could be an interesting conflict here: both sides have a legitimate claim on the planet. But there is little interest in digging into the specifics of character or motivation to uncover any real conflict, just a superficial contrast between fear and selfishness on the one hand, and apple-pie and good vibes affirmation of teamwork and “being the best humanity has to offer” on the other. The negotiations are even summarised by voice-over rather than dramatised directly.

It’s incurious and inert, unable to inject any nuance or complexity into the situation, or root conflict in characters’ needs and desires in an emotionally compelling way. It goes through the motions, but lacks emotion.

And this isn’t a one-off: I almost always find Chibnall’s writing on Doctor Who to be shallow. At its best it is entertainingly shallow, but it lacks the emotional intelligence or thematic depth of Moffat or Davies’ scripts.

Chibnall as showrunner

Ever optimistic, I hoped that Chibnall would prove a better showrunner than individual contributor. After all, if you can pick the right talent, you can balance out your own shortcomings.

There was a lot to like about the Thirteenth Doctor’s era in theory. Jodie Whittaker’s debut episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, set in present-day Sheffield, set a promising, grounded tone evocative of how RTD rooted his era in the everyday life of Rose and her family, with an intriguing ensemble cast in Ryan, Yaz and Graham. Whittaker’s wide-eyed enthusiasm and optimism were a welcome contrast to Peter Capaldi’s moodier, edgier Doctor (as amazing as Capaldi was in the role as an actor).

But I think most fans would admit that satisfying character development wasn’t Chibnall’s forte. Unlike the likes of Rose Tyler, Martha, Donna, Amy and Rory, Clara (eventually, once the show settled down on a single ‘variant’ of her), Bill and so on, I never felt I really got to know Thirteen’s ‘fam’ or root for them in a meaningful way.

To be fair, that may well be in part autobiographical: watching Doctor Who casually in my thirties as my personal and professional life got busier and more complicated was never going to have the same emotional impact as watching as a highly-engaged teen and twentysomething. I also don’t have the appetite to revisit the era to unpick in detail the writing choices that didn’t work for me.

But by the time we reached the end of Whittaker and Chibnall’s first series, with The Battle of Rav… something something. Sorry, I had to google it, it’s The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. And doesn’t that story title scream ‘sci-fi gubbins’ of the sort that Doctor Who always sought to transcend in order to make the show accessible to a broad Saturday teatime audience?

The show moved out of that traditional slot to Sunday evenings, incidentally, which I think was a mistake. There were a whole bunch of other production-related missteps, like a bizarre series teaser at the end of the first episode merely showing the names and faces of guest stars, as if the presence of Mark Addy, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Shane Zaza and the like would have kids rushing to tune in. No offence to those actors, but it was a bad case of “TV industry brain” where I think the production team massively overestimated the draw of ordinary working actors to the target audience, and underestimated the importance of actually teasing monsters, alien worlds, past eras and actual stories.

Anyway, I’ve digressed from my digression! Back to The Battle of Ransack Of Chibnall’s Fanfic… Chibnall admitted in Doctor Who Magazine that they filmed a first draft due to running out of time for rewrites. That shows painfully, with what could be a powerful set-up in having the return of the villain who killed Graham’s wife Grace in the opening episode unfortunately squandered (to the extent that I’d forgotten completely that was a thing until I read the Wikipedia synopsis to jog my memory).

Again, making TV is tough, and I salute anyone who can make a show as complex as Doctor Who. But I think it goes to show the skill issue compared to the relatively high bar set by previous showrunners. Some of Moffat and RTD’s scripts struggled because of constraints, but never flopped as hard as this.

It’s the Writing, Stupid

Here’s my core thesis:

Doctor Who works best when it combines science fiction flights of fantasy with grounded human emotion and drama. Russell T Davies did this brilliantly when he brought back the show in 2005, and the show can do it again, if the writers are deliberate and skilful in their writing.

I want to venture into muddy waters and discuss the alternative theory in some quarters of “go woke, go broke” – that Doctor Who has lost its way because of progressivism. I think there’s a half-truth here, often wrapped up in a lot of sound and fury and culture war nonsense.

It’s easy for critics on the right to put the blame on “wokeness” but I think the real problem of the Chibnall era was the shallow writing. This made the show’s gestures in the direction of diversity, environmental issues and so on feel preachier and less organic than the green politics of 70s Doctor Who or gay representation of RTD’s original era, particularly with Captain Jack Harkness (which hasn’t aged well with John Barrowman’s track record, but that’s another story). If you tell interesting and compelling human stories, they will resonate across political and cultural divides, as I argued in my article right- and left-wing reactions to Apple TV’s sci-fi thriller Severance.

As I’ll come to in more detail in discussing the RTD2 era, I do think the perception in these polarised times that Doctor Who is “too woke” (obviously an ideologically loaded term!) has damaged the show, and that the perception is an accurate if simplified critical view of the show’s progressive politics.

But I think what provokes that reaction is a perception of preachiness, which comes from simplistic, one-dimensional writing. Being both progressive and well-written, which would imply a greater degree of subtlety and nuance, would have shielded the show from much (though not all) of the criticism directed at it.

Like Bill Clinton’s slogan “It’s the economy, stupid”, I think that most viewers of Doctor Who just want good storytelling, rather than something that is obviously playing to either left or right wing in obvious ways. It’s important that stories can be “bigger on the inside” and have social and political commentaries as part of their themes. But that works best when it is integrated organically into the story, where characters and adventure come first, rather than it appearing to be tied to a single ideological viewpoint.

The Nostalgia Trap tightens

Chibnall’s second season turned to mucking around with Doctor Who lore to generate discussion among fans, to diminishing returns (“The Master is back — and has destroyed Gallifrey, again!”). Here we begin to see the nostalgia trap tightening. In the Moffat era, there had been problems with over-reliance on past continuity (assuming the viewers knew that “Davros” is the name of the creator of the Daleks in the very first scene of the season opener The Magician’s Apprentice, as I mentioned in part one, for example). But Moffat at least had a propulsive wit and energy, as well as that all-important emotional literacy, to be able to carry you along even if you didn’t get all the details.

By this time, nostalgia and continuity-remixing is having to do the heavy lifting instead of good storytelling. That’s a feature that hasn’t gone away, as we’ve seen in RTD’s recent season with the return of Susan, the Rani and Sutekh, all handled without due care to make them matter to audiences not inherently invested in the past as fans.

There’s not necessarily a problem with Doctor Who drawing on its past, if elements are introduced in ways that are interesting and dramatic to those who don’t watch the show. But you’ve got to take real care not to make continuity feel like homework and for it to be inclusive of new viewers, rather than offputting.

If continuity had been deployed with some more dramatic flair, I wouldn’t have had an issue necessarily, but to me it felt leaden: continuity-bombs as a substitute for actual drama. Before we got to the controversial The Timeless Children story that rewrote the Doctor’s origins, I was already out.

I’m sure Chris Chibnall’s a passionate fan, lovely man and has talent when he plays to his strengths, so I’m sorry to be so negative about his time on the show. But his era of Doctor Who pushed me away from watching it, largely for sheer frustration with the clunkiness of the writing.

I dipped back in for the start of Flux to see if it had improved, but it hadn’t really: it had a ‘kitchen sink’ approach that was superficially more exciting but I still found it emotionally and thematically hollow.

By that point, you might even have caught me muttering “Come back, Russell T Davies, all is forgiven”.

And then, in a shocking twist, he did.

To be continued…

I’m still working on part two of my Doctor Who and the Nostalgia Trap article, but my thoughts on AI are coming thick and fast…

With what was previously the realm of science fiction fast becoming a reality, we’re having to rapidly get to grips with the impact of ‘AI’, from Large Language Model powered chatbots to picture and video generation. Previously, I wrote principles on Remaining Human in the Age of AI as the beginnings of a manifesto on AI use — and now I’m attempting to put some practical flesh on the bones.

Read on for my 12 rules for (perhaps) using AI without losing your soul, creativity or ability to think independently…

A Rule of Life for Healthy AI Use

1. I will deliberately invest time in cultivating my craft, learning from other humans, reading deeply and thinking independently

The digital world already presents us with so many pressures that seem urgent that they make us neglect the truly important activities that we need to preserve space for offline.

As creative thinkers, we need space and time to think away from the digital hustle – and AI threatens to intensify the firehose of shallow ‘content’.

Face-to-face relationships; being in nature; reading books. All of these are more important and life-giving to me than AI.

2. I will prioritise slow, thoughtful processes in my work, resisting the pressure to optimise for speed or volume

We need to value the process of creating and thinking as a valuable human activity in itself.

Quality thinking, writing and creativity is often slow, winding and indirect.

When creativity does burst forth suddenly, it’s usually the culmination of a long background process of ruminating and developing.

3. I will avoid using AI when I can reasonably get help from another human person

One of the dangers of technology (like money) is to give us results without the complications of human relationships.

But in the messiness and friction of engaging with other people, of asking for help, we grow and deepen our connections to one another.

4. I will use AI to support my own thought and creativity, not as a replacement for it

In particular, I won’t use AI for generating intellectual or creative work.

I will use AI to give feedback, to challenge my ideas, to make me think harder — not do the work for me.

Effort is not the enemy; effort is how I grow.

5. I will give myself time to think and wrestle creatively for myself before using AI

I don’t want turning to AI to be my first instinct or response to a problem. I need to make sure that I keep my own skills sharp, and make space for creativity and inspiration to develop.

See also:

6. I will use AI where I already have skill and understanding to be able to assess its output

One of the big problems with AI is the way it hallucinates confidently wrong information, often mixed in with stuff that’s broadly correct.

You have to assess it critically, and you need to know something of what you are using it for to be able to check its output.

7. I will remember AI is orientated to plausibility not truthfulness, and treat its output critically

This inherent to the nature of LLMs: they aren’t orientated to truth or accuracy, only statistical probability based on their training data and the prompts you give them.

It can seem remarkably effective in giving some kind of overview of a topic, but it’s very risky to rely on.

At best, it can be a helpful springboard to finding proper sources to turn to. But the more you use it outside your area of expertise, the more likely you are to swallow errors without realising it.

8. I will be mindful of the environmental impact of AI

This is a surprisingly complex question. Yes, a ChatGPT query uses more energy and water than, say, a standard Google search, but it also uses a lot less energy than streaming an hour of HD video.

So I don’t think this is a knock-down reason not to use AI, unless you also abstain from lots of other online activities that rely on data-centres.

But I would suggest it means using AI sparingly and mindfully, only where it adds utility that can’t be achieved with less energy-intensive tools.

9. I will remember that I am under no obligation to use AI, taking breaks from AI use and promoting AI-free spaces and projects

There’s a massive push from corporations to get us to adopt AI, with it popping up all over the place in different software and services. You don’t have to use it, and companies shouldn’t be forcing it on users.

Don’t get addicted. If you can’t stop, that’s a sign you need to stop.

It’s healthy to have spaces and projects that are AI-free. I fully support, for example, schools, universities, publishers or creative communities in having no-AI policies where they choose (and in many cases I think it necessary and wise)

10. I will support others in setting healthy boundaries around AI

I won’t pressure other people to use AI beyond their own comfort zone.

I’ll gently challenge those who I think are overusing it to consider their limits.

11. I will be transparent about my use of AI

I have actually used AI in helping me develop these rules! I’m not an anti-AI absolutist, I think it can be useful if we can mitigate its dangers.

For these rules, I wrote a first draft myself of eight commands, as “dos and don’t” and asked ChatGPT to put them in first person and suggest other commitments, some of which I adapted, rewriting them for myself.

I will be upfront about how I have used AI in my projects, and invite accountability to stop me from misusing these technologies.

12. I will seek community with others seeking to take a cautious and critical approach to AI

I’m open to the possibility that we might need to eschew it completely. But I still think the technology has potential for good if used wisely.

So let’s keep working these questions through together, to work out what humane AI use might look like, while being skeptical of AI hype and protective of human creativity and critical thinking.

What do you think? Are these rules too strict, or not strict enough?

What rules have you set for yourself about how you will or won’t use AI tools?

Let me know in the chat or comments below!

It’s been twenty years since Doctor Who returned to our screens with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper starring, and renowned TV scriptwriter Russell T Davies in the showrunner’s seat. I was a fan of Doctor Who already but fell in love with the new version of the show.

Now, almost a generation on, Russell T Davies is back in charge of the show, and has been bringing back the old favourites – first David Tennant and Catherine Tate for some specials, and now making the surprise regeneration of Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor into past companion actor Billie Piper (apparently, at least, not excluding fan theories and potential narrative shenanigans!)

Whatever RTD has planned, it’s hard not to see this as a sign of creative exhaustion, the Whoniverse equivalent of Marvel’s gambit of casting Robert Downey Jr as Doctor Doom. It’s not that Piper or Downey aren’t talented stars, but it shows a backward-looking obsession with the past that indicates a franchise in crisis and an instinct to return to past glories.

It’s not just me that feels this way — what I thought was a fairly offhand comment I made on this on the official Doctor Who Facebook page garnered over 1,800 likes from fellow-fans (if you just found my Substack via that comment, hello!)

Beyond that, who is this show even for now?

On the one hand, it seems to be pitching itself for a younger, progressively-minded audience (or is “too woke”, if you don’t like its politics — more on that hot potato later.)

On the other, it’s stuffing itself full of deep-cut Doctor Who lore like the Rani, Omega and now regenerating the Doctor into Piper to remind the audience of its glory days 20 years ago.

I’d had high hopes that Russell T Davies’ return would reinvigorate the show, and while I feel the overall quality of the writing has improved somewhat over previous incumbent Chris Chibnall, RTD’s overall story arcs and finales have fallen a long way short, and it seems to have failed to reignite interest in the show as I hoped I would.

Doctor Who faces a very challenging TV industry context with the collapse of the streaming bubble and fragmentation of audiences in the face of TikTok and YouTube dragging away eyeballs from traditional TV. So there are big external threats to the show — but there have been genuine quality issues too, running back a long way.

Let’s head on a tour of the last 20 years of modern Who and my journey with it as a fan, and see if we can take a peek into the Time Vortex to guess at what’s ahead…

This is going to be a long one, so be warned, I’ll be breaking it up into a couple of instalments!

Me, Who and RTD 1.0

Doctor Who has always been a big part of my imaginative life, ever since I was growing up in the wilderness years for the show of the 1990s, when it was off the air. My exposure to the cult science fiction classic came through Target novelisations, New Adventures / Eighth Doctor Adventures novels borrowed from my local library, through TV repeats, and eventually through collecting VHSs, DVDs and the myriad of spin-off comics, novels and audio dramas that flourished creatively.

So it was with surprise and delight in 2003 that I heard the news announced one September morning on BBC Radio 4 that the show would be returning, with Russell T Davies acting as showrunner and it being made by BBC Wales in Cardiff. I was about to head to Cardiff for university, and it felt like the stars were aligning for me as a fan!

I remember the excitement back in 2005 of that first new season with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper as the Doctor and Rose. Defying expectations, it caught the zeitgeist and was a genuine hit.

Much of that was down to the skill of RTD’s writing. Although there were some tonal inconsistencies to iron out early on, the show managed to combine broad sci-fi adventure for a family audience with a genuine emotional groundedness, with a new focus on Rose as the companion and her family life and relationships. It was a revelation.

At last, it felt as if the potential of this show that I’d always loved was being fully realised and recognised by the masses.

(By the way, RTD had previously worked with Eccleston in The Second Coming, a Philip Pullman-like New Atheism tinged take on the return of Christ as a northern English bloke, which did nothing to lessen the quasi-messianic overtones of RTD’s take on the Doctor, which I’ve written about in various articles including The Romantic Rationalism of Doctor Who, Doctor Who at 60: The spiritual themes behind the sci-fi phenomenon, and Doctor Who and the Human Longing for A Messiah.)

A fan on the frontline

Over the coming years, I thrilled with Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant as the Doctor, as the show built in popularity. I saw the show being filmed around Cardiff and its environs, attending the series 2 press launch in Cardiff Bay and interviewing Russell T Davies for the student newspaper.

In 2008, I started a podcast offering fan commentaries on the show that grew into Impossible Podcasts (the archive is still available if you want to hear my complaints about RTD1’s finales at the time!) Along with my gang of fan friends, we often quibbled about the broader strokes of RTD’s writing — especially the over-the-top finales and reset buttons — but set within a context of genuine joy and appreciation.

Steven Moffat, Matt Smith and beyond

My interest ran high into my late twenties, with the transition to Steven Moffat as showrunner, with Matt Smith taking on the lead role. This for me was the peak of the modern show.

Moffat is to my mind the best writer for Doctor Who of all time (maybe Robert Holmes from the classic series could also be in contention, but for sheer volume and variety Moffat wins out). He combines the emotional literacy of Russell T Davies at his best with sharper plotting and a greater imaginative range. He sometimes has a weakness for ‘clever’ writing over effective writing (his efforts on Sherlock to constantly outwit the audience suffered from this), but he’s delivered some of the most iconic and memorable Doctor Who monsters and characters, from the Weeping Angels to River Song.

He also displayed much more formal variation in his time as showrunner. RTD1.0 had a fairly standard template for his seasons, but Moffat reinvented his approach both structurally and tonally several times over, from the “dark fairytale” of early Matt Smith to the “movie every week” of series 7A, and the different iterations of Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor as weary cynic to rock’n’roll dad to eccentric professor.

The 50th anniversary of the show was a particular high point of the show’s popularity and of my own fan involvement. I attended the massive Doctor Who Celebration convention in London and watched The Day of the Doctor in a cinema-full of fans. (There was actually a technical issue at the Odeon which meant the 3D didn’t work and the simulcast was delayed, causing a near-riot, though thankfully we were able to watch it in the end!)

The anniversary special was wildly and improbably successful, acting as a satisfying multi-Doctor anniversary celebration, being a culmination of the Time War arc and setting up new direction and storylines. Beneath the camp, RTD’s Doctor Who is actually quite a dark universe: in his version of the Time War, the Doctor had made the impossible choice to wipe out both Daleks and Time Lords alike. The Doctor is a hero who tries his best but sometimes faces impossible odds in which he can only choose the lesser evil.

Moffat gave the Doctor the opportunity to redeem his choice, saving Gallifrey so it only appeared to have disappeared, a more romantic vision of the Doctor as a fairytale hero, where everyone lives. This tension between realism and romanticism is central to Doctor Who and Moffat managed to tie it all together with brilliant elegance.

Waning interest

As with many other fans, my enthusiasm began to wane in the Capaldi years. Moffat was a clever writer and wrote many of the show’s best episodes, and Peter Capaldi was a compelling Doctor. But there was something darker and moodier about the Capaldi era that I found less appealing, and less welcoming to kids. But even though it was less to my taste, there was no denying it was intelligent and well-crafted.

There was, however, an increasing tendency to rely on familiarity with the show’s lore — series 9 opener The Magician’s Apprentice, for example, had an opening scene which relied on the audience recognising the name ‘Davros’ as an enemy of the Doctor, as Twelve ran across a young version of the villain on the battlefield of Skaro, home planet of the Daleks. Fun if you’re a fan, but potentially off-putting to new viewers.

With my adult responsibilities growing, and without the commitment of running a Doctor Who podcast to keep me anchored, I still watched the show but drifted away from active involvement with fandom.

But Doctor Who was facing a problem similar to that posed by Tony Gilroy’s Andor to the Star Wars franchise. With RTD and Moffat, two very talented and well-respected screenwriters had set the bar high in terms of writing quality: far higher than your average BBC scriptwriter is capable of reliably producing as part of an ongoing franchise. So the question of succession was an incredibly challenging one.

Would the next showrunner be able to keep up the quality, and bring in a fresh generation of fans? And as the streaming wars began to heat up, would Doctor Who be able to hold its own?

Spoiler warning: no, it wouldn’t.

That’s enough for now, I think! Further drift was still to come with the Chibnall era – and then RTD2 would pull me back in. But has it all been in vain for the future of the show? Watch out for part two!