Where did C.S. Lewis and the Inklings regularly meet for informal literary discussions?

C.S. Lewis and the Inklings regularly met at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford.

The Eagle and Child, commonly nicknamed the Bird and Baby, became associated with the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group active mainly from the 1930s through the early 1950s. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and other writers read drafts aloud, discussed books, and debated ideas there.

The pub stands on St Giles’ Street in central Oxford. The group also met in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College and in other locations, so the Eagle and Child was not their only meeting place. Its strongest association comes from the recollections of members and the pub’s place in Oxford literary history.

A frequent mix-up is the nearby Lamb and Flag, another Oxford pub linked with writers and with Lewis’s circle. The Inklings were not a formal society with a membership list or constitution; they were a changing group of friends whose conversations influenced some of the twentieth century’s best-known fantasy and Christian literature.