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Many years ago I got my Grandpa’s very old copy (I think late 1950s, early 1960s?) of this book, which obviously was rather delicate and fragile, so I have kept it safely in a box ever since. A few years later I got the C.S. Lewis Signature Box Set which had a much more robust copy as part of it, and a few years after that, I’ve finally got around to reading it!

The book is a collection of letters from Screwtape (a senior devil) to his nephew Wormwood (a junior devil) – we can clearly tell that there are replies between, but we’re not privy to those. Wormwood has been assigned a ‘patient’ and the letters contain advice, critique and general feedback about how he is doing, what he needs to do differently, and what opportunities to look for.

It’s a confusing read to start with to get your head around the terminology. As a Christian, the phrase “the enemy” would normally mean Satan, and “Our Father”, God, but in this book the roles are of course, reversed! It’s very cleverly written and ends up challenging you in all sorts of areas. There’s a hugely strong warning against luke-warmness, they are excited when the patient is starting to head in the wrong direction, but thinks things are OK so long as he is still a church-goer.

I occasionally found it hard to read, the sentences got quite long in places, and C.S. Lewis is a very clever man, so I think sometimes it was just a bit beyond me, but mostly it’s readable, the content is good and the premise is superb. Definitely worth a read.

At the back is a section which I believe was previously published separately, called “Screwtape proposes a toast”, which is a 20ish page speech that he gives at the graduation at The Tempters Training College for young Devils. It was written maybe 20 years later, and again had good content but was a bit hard going at times – good to see Screwtape in another setting though!

Some of my favourite quotes are below (and remember to bear in mind, these are all written from a devil’s perspective):

• “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
• “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle sloe, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
• “Let him think of [humility] not as a self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind o opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character.”
• “We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land with favoured heroes attain – not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
• “Here were vermin so muddled in mind, so passively responsive to environment, that it was very hard to raise them to that level of clarity and deliberateness at which mortal sin becomes possible. To raise them just enough; but not that fatal millimetre of ‘too much’. For then, of course, all would possibly have been lost. They might have seen; they might have repented.”

At 64 pages I imagined I’d fly through this, even if it was non-fiction. Nope, 10 days!

Essentially these four chapters are Lewis’ scribblings in his notepad after his wife, Joy, passed away. Sometimes it’s a sheer expression of grief, others get more theological.

He actually originally published it anonymously and so the initials with which he refers to other people are all different – I know “H” refers to his wife, but not any of the others!

Some ideas he raises are so interesting. He suggests that some qualities we consider bad, God has, and that they’re not bad, but we only see them as bad because of our human narrow view of the world. C.S. Lewis is definitely one person I have at my dream dinner party – he’s said some quite controversial things in his time and I want to talk much further!

He gives a analogy of grief as going round in circles, and daring to hope that he might be on a spiral, and which direction he is going on it. Such a clever man.

Again there are some great one-liners in here too, my favourite being “What do people mean when they say ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good.’? Have they never been to a dentist?”

I very much enjoyed his use of the plural of cul de sac, “culs de sac”, which is so much more pleasing than what we’d assume “cul de sacs”. But that’s a bit of an aside.

I also loved his reference to “when you have learned to do quadratics and enjoy doing them” – because eventually everyone should enjoy them 😀