English literature

Did you? Yes.

Which uni? Nottingham? No Staffordshire had a very good university for philosophy strangely and philosophy and English literature and I think people say what was the point of doing that at the time I can't think about the point of doing it was at all but now it does help me to see quite complex things and distill it down quite simply which is handy because I think people think with marketing and PR that you need to be sounding as complicated as possible And really what you want to do is sound as simple as possible so everyone understands what you're talking about.

Yeah.

So I'd been a journalist, then I went to do that, working more to stay in some kind of sideways moving to PR.

Streaming live and available as a podcast on plains.org.nz.

Piers Fernie is a psychology and English lit grad from Otago Uni.

He works producing education software, and in his spare time he writes novels.

His first, a well-received sci-fi thriller called Alkaline Dawn, and now a character-driven fantasy, The Dread Lord's Accountant, set in a kind of Byzantine come Middle Eastern inspired mystical world ruled by demons.

But you can see my bookshelves here.

So I've got all the classics, the Russians, the English, the Americans, the Spanish.

So

no, I don't create content around what people would

Well, the one track that came out of me musically, uh, and that Don Henley, who, and, and Glenn were just brilliant lyricists.

I, I think Henley was an English lit major, so he was basically a great poet.

He could write lyrics that were like little picture postcards that tell you a story as you go through this song that I'm singing to you.

Uh, a- and so the combination of what music I could write, the vocal arrangements we had, and Don's voice, their lyrics and, and the guitar parts that Joe and I have brought together was just a magical combination.

He was a British author, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian.

He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalene College, Oxford, and Magdalene College, Cambridge.

He's best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia.

But he's also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters, The Space Trilogy, and his nonfiction Christian Apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

And as Christian apologetics, it took me a long time to understand the word apologetics, but it means in defense of, so making the defense of Christianity.

He was a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, who was the author of The Lord of the Rings.

Would you not like to have a conversation with the two of them together? And they both served on the English faculty at the University of Oxford.

And they were active in an informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings.

And there are all sorts of ways of doing that.

But we think that should be a part of every degree, including, you know, English literature.

Not easy.

It's a bit of a stretching objective, but I think it has to be part of what we do.

Yeah, interesting.

And so, and it's not an accident you mentioned English literature, I think, Vivian.

No, I mean, I'm modestly obsessed with the validity of my own degree.

Well, I mentioned it.

Yeah, totally.

Looking around like, what am I doing? I want to wear a sweater and be an English lit professor.

Why is this me? I

hate myself.

Uh, before we come to the end of this interview, I must say that there were a few Marxists.

Um, um, I studied English literature, but I did read a lot about Marxism, but there were a lot of people there in the, um, text that I personally didn't know anything about, um, like Quorsch.

So, um, um, um, so to me, it was an educating piece apart from the, you know, um, the, the, the, the, the history that you bring in this book.

There are also a lot of thinkers and a lot of texts you introduce, and I'm sure our listeners will be able to take a lot from, um, um, from this book as well.