Professor Bill Gray of the University of Chichester’s English department has been invited to talk at Oxford University for the third time in six months.

Back in June, Bill gave a lecture on George MacDonald’s fantasy novels Phantastes and Lilith in the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture’s series of Public Lectures with distinguished speakers. In October, Bill is giving a paper entitled ‘The Strategic Uses of Caricature in the Writing of George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman’ to the University of Oxford C.S. Lewis Society in Pusey House (and afterwards in ‘The Eagle and Child’, the famous watering-hole of The Inklings).

And in November, Bill is booked to give a paper entitled ‘At the Back of George MacDonald: Romanticism, Fairy Tales and the Redemptive Child’ to the Oxford Children's Literature and Youth Culture Colloquium (CLYCC) in the University of Oxford’s English Faculty Building:

Versions of these papers will appear in Bill’s new book: Fantasy and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and R.L. Stevenson, for which he has just signed a contract with Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This new book, a follow-up to Bill’s Death and Fantasy, which has just appeared in a revised paperback edition, is due to appear next year.