Lewis and Tolkien at War

Tolkien fought at the Battle of the Somme, and two of his sons served in WWII. “It is no wonder, then, that some of the most striking images in the novels of Tolkien and Lewis are the battle scenes,” recounts Joseph Loconte in his The War for Middle-Earth: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945. This book is the sequel to Loconte’s New York Times bestseller, A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War, an account of Lewis and Tolkien in WWI. Both books are thoroughly enjoyable reads with a common approach: the lives and writings of the authors are economically woven into the history and ideas of the period. I think Loconte is right to frame these great writers as champions of the West, but is he correct about which version of the West they found admirable?