The Lion, the Witch and the Chequebook

Christianity Today reports the joyous announcement that Narnia Will Return In New Books.

HarperCollins will also be commissioning new Narnia books. "What we wanted to avoid is what I call the Pooh situation," says Simon Adley, managing director of the C.S. Lewis Company. "In other words, exploitation of the books."

Right. A movie series. Associated merchandising. Narnia spinoff books. Not exploitation at all. Just good Christian ethics at work.

While Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham, has resisted all efforts to produce new Narnia books, even from charities, Lewis's biographer, Kathryn Lindskoog states

"The right to issue new books about Narnia was evidently being reserved for whoever might offer high enough financial gain to the owners of the Lewis Estate."

EoR hopes such moral fortitude is reflected in the new books, and also that certain predilections noted in Prisoner of Narnia in the New Yorker are also more prominent:

Lewis developed and craved what even his Christian biographer, Jacobs, calls "mildly sadomasochistic fantasies"; in letters to a (homosexual) friend, he named the women he’d like to spank, and for a time signed his private letters "Philomastix" - "whip-lover."

Narnia should have lots more spanking. Then the oral sex (those that have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail will understand the reference).