JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley On November 22, 1963, three towering figures of the 20th century died. John F. Kennedy is the one that we all remember, but let’s consider the others. How to measure these men, 50 years on? Huxley’s star has been on the wane since his misappropriation by a hedonistic drug culture whose escapism and self-indulgence he deplored even before their zenith in the late Sixties. The English grave he shares with his parents in Compton, Surrey, has been neglected. Most of his 50-odd books, many hugely popular in their time, are now eclipsed by one. Yet that book, Brave New World , remains with George Orwell’s 1984 one of the great dystopian novels of the modern world, and for many the most applicable to a post-Soviet world of vast populations lulled to torpidity by consumer culture. Lewis is now more than ever a name to conjure with, his Narnia books established as classics (and a film franchise), his works of theology bringing a devot...
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