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- [00:01]
Narrator
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Historian/Expert
at the Home Depot.
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Narrator
Exclusion supplies to homedepot.com Pricematch for details. It is late April 1905 in the drawing room of a newly built house on the outskirts of Belfast. A six year old boy in a sailor suit is swinging his legs, sitting on the edge of an ottoman. His parents are entertaining visitors, but he is bored, longing to escape to his books and games upstairs to entertain himself. The boy called Jack by his family studies his parents friends and lets his imagination roam. The woman in the round spectacles becomes a fussy dormouse in a lace collar. Sitting beside her, the stout, mustachioed gentleman grows into a genial walrus in a waistcoat. Jack bites back a grin and his mother catches him reaching out to ruffle his hair. He pulls an exaggerated grimace to amuse her, then shoots a conspiratorial look towards his older brother. 9 year old Warnie is perched stiffly on the edge of a straight backed chair, chin lifted like a soldier. Jack guesses he's pretending the room is a parade ground rather than an Edwardian parlor. While his mother is distracted by conversation, Jack eases himself off the ottoman and pads to the doorway, glancing back to beckon to his brother. Slipping out of the room, he makes his way along a book lined corridor. It's only a few weeks since the family moved in and the brothers still feel like explorers charting an undiscovered country. From the bookcase, titles in gilt lettering Glimmer Conan Doyle, Dickens, Homer. Jack trails a finger along a shelf to greet them as if they were old friends. Behind him, he can hear Warnie's footsteps. Deciding to turn the moment into a game of hide and seek, he begins to trot up the back staircase, moving as quickly as his short legs will carry him. He takes one flight and then another, reaching a landing on the second floor that leads to the little end room, their favorite attic den, far from the world of the adults. Downstairs, Jack pushes open the door to the ramshackle room. Sunlight pours through a high window and catches on the polished wood of the large wardrobe that dominates the wall opposite. Nearly as tall as the ceiling, it has elaborately carved doors, the handiwork of his grandfather. Touching the scrollwork, Jack opens the door. Inside, the coats hang in a dense, shadowy row. He presses his face into them, inhaling the rich smell of fur and mothballs. Then, hearing his brother's footsteps, he climbs inside. He pulls the door to close enough to hide him, but not quite shut. Everyone knows you must never shut yourself inside a wardrobe. Crouched in the dark, he listens. Warnie arrives moments later, breathless from the chase. Through the narrow strip of light, Jack glimpses him in the doorway, scanning the room with a thoroughness of an officer inspecting his barracks. It takes Warnie only a heartbeat to discover the hiding place, but instead of dragging Jack out, he grins and ducks into the wardrobe. Beside him, the door eases almost shut. Downstairs, the house murmurs with adult voices. But in this mothball scented hiding place, their own world is waiting. Jack, who will grow up to become the writer known as C.S. lewis, can almost feel the crunch of snow beneath his feet. One of the most famous writers of the 20th century, C.S. lewis was a scholar of medieval literature, an influential Christian thinker, and a supremely gifted storyteller. A professor at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Lewis is perhaps best known for his chronicles of Narnia stories, which captured the imagination of millions with their blend of spiritual depth and swashbuckling adventure. But how were the seeds of the magical world of Narnia first planted? How did Lewis unconventional personal life and the writers and scholars with whom he spent his days influence his work? And what part did his complex relationship with faith play in the stories that still enchant adults and children around the world? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is a short history of C.S. lewis. The story begins in Belfast in the north of Ireland, where in November 1898, an Anglo Irish couple welcome their second son into the world. Though christened Clive Staples, the latter being the maiden name of his great grandmother, the child is soon called Jack or Jacks by his family. Dr. Michael Ward, from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, is the author of planet Narnia the seven heavens in the imagination of C.S.
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Historian/Expert
lewis C.S. lewis parents were Albert and Flora. Albert was a solicitor, a law court attorney, and his mother, Flora, was a very well educated woman. She had a first class degree in mathematics at a time when women's education was, you know, fairly unusual. She was the daughter of a clergyman. So C.S. lewis's grandfather, Thomas Hamilton, was a clergyman in the Anglican Church of Ireland. And it was his grandfather who baptized the little Clive Staples after he'd been born in November 1898.
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Narrator
He adores his mother, but the most enduring relationship of his life is with his older brother, Warren, always known as Warnie. He is the more athletic of the boys, while the younger Jack is cleverer, easily able to keep up with Warnie's level of reading.
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Historian/Expert
The two brothers were always close and they spent a lot of time indoors. His parents were always concerned that if they went outside in the cold and the rain, they would fall ill. And so they were often cooped up indoors. And they learned to entertain themselves by mostly by reading books and by writing their own stories. So I think that was possibly one of the contributing factors to Lewis's becoming a great writer and scholar himself.
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Narrator
An early childhood favorite of Jack's is Beatrix Potter, especially Squirrel Nutkin, and he spends many hours creating a fictional world for his own cast of talking animals. In 1905, when he is 6, the family moves to an Edwardian style villa called Little Lee. In the attic, the two brothers carve out a refuge away from the grownups. And it's up here that Jack finds a very special piece of furniture.
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Historian/Expert
There was one particular wardrobe that had been designed and built, I believe, by Lewis's grandfather, very ornate and beautiful. And that wardrobe, incidentally, is now in an American university called Wheaton College. Wheaton College in Illinois has a centre devoted to the study of C.S. lewis. And they managed to get hold of the wardrobe so you can go and visit it. And I've looked inside it. There's a little label on the inside of the door saying enter your own risk.
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Narrator
Warnie, however, does not have long to enjoy the new family home before he is sent to England to attend Wynyard School, just north of London. Jack desperately misses his older brother, but worse is to befall the family in 1908 when the boy's mother, Flora, falls ill and dies from cancer. Her death is the defining tragedy of Jack's life, but it also signals his separation from his father, with Jack now sent away to England to join Warney at boarding school. Jack claims to hate England on sight the moment he arrives. And matters are not helped by the welcome he gets at his new home.
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Historian/Expert
The headmaster of this school was something of a sadist, I think it has to be said. He liked to flog the boys. It's like something out of Dickens, you know, one of those malevolent headmaster figures. And he was later certified insane and died in a lunatic asylum. This Headmaster Lewis himself apparently was never actually a victim of these beatings. He was top of the form and there was no excuse for him to get punished that the headmaster could easily find. But Lewis had to witness these floggings when he saw other boys being belted and hit.
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Narrator
Warnie, however, is one of those singled out for punishment, and soon Jack is writing letters home, suggesting the brothers attend a day school in Belfast instead. His appeals fall on deaf ears. But soon the canings at Wynyard grow so extreme that a parent brings a High Court action against the headmaster. Though the case is dropped, it ruins the school, which eventually closes. By now, Warney has moved up to a senior school in Malvern, an elegant Victorian spa town, and Jack is sent to be closer to him. Still just 12, he attends Cherbourg, a small school of only 17 pupils, where he is recognized as unusually gifted. During this period, he begins to abandon the Christianity of his childhood and remains an atheist for the next 15 years. When he is old enough, Jack wins a scholarship to Malvern College, his brother's school. But in the same year, Warni is caught smoking and ejected and turns instead to working towards entry to the officer training college at Sandhurst. Left at Malvern without his brother, at a school where athletic ability seems more prized than academic talent, Lewis struggles to adjust. It comes as no great hardship when, after a few years, his father withdraws him when he is just 15,
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Historian/Expert
Lewis was so bright, he was so intelligent, he was obviously leagues ahead of everybody else of his own age that eventually his dad realized that it was pointless to try and educate him in regular schools. So he sent him to be privately tutored by this man called William Kirkpatrick, who was a retired headmaster. In fact, he had been Albert Lewis headmaster when Albert was young, but he was still interested in doing a little bit of private coaching and teaching, which he did at his home in Surrey, where he lived in retirement with his wife. And he took Lewis in and began to tutor him privately, especially in Classics, because Lewis wanted to go to Oxford to study Classics.
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Narrator
But before he sets foot in Surrey, the wider world is shaken by a crisis when Europe is engulfed in war. Warney is rushed through his officer training at sandhurst and by November 1914, the is at the front in France. Jack, still a teenager, experiences a more peaceful autumn.
- [12:39]
Historian/Expert
Kirkpatrick would sit down with Lewis and they'd go through their Greek and Latin authors together in the mornings, and then in the afternoons, Lewis would go off on a ramble for a walk, he'd come back for an afternoon tea, he'd study further into the evening. And he said that that was an almost ideal way of spending his days. He really thrived under Kirkpatrick's tutelage.
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Narrator
Here Jack starts to work on his own poetry, aspiring to follow in the literary footsteps of fellow Irishman WB Yates. He also learns how to argue a discipline that will later turn the bookish boy into one of the most compelling and occasionally combative debaters of his generation. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet, like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking champion of checkouts.
- [13:46]
Historian/Expert
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Narrator
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Narrator
In late 1916, at the age of 18, Lewis wins a scholarship to study at Oxford's University College. But he finds the place strangely deserted as nearly all of the young men are away fighting. He is given lodgings with an enormous sitting room, a fireplace, richly carved oak tables, a a grand piano. But his life of comfort prickles his conscience while so many are risking their lives.
- [14:51]
Historian/Expert
As an Irishman, Lewis was exempted from conscription. He didn't have to serve, but he volunteered in the Officers Training Corps at Oxford. Lewis happened to be put in a room with a fellow cadet whose name was Paddy Moore, and these two men happened to be put together just because of the alphabetical arrangement of the billet. So L and M, Lewis and Moore, and they struck up a friendship and they promised each other that if one of them was to die, that the surviving man would look after the dead man's family because Lewis had his aging father alone back in Belfast, and Paddy had his mother, but no father on the scene.
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Narrator
After a brief period of training, Lewis takes leave with Paddy's family in Bristol. He quickly bonds with Paddy's mother, Janie Moore, who looks after him when he falls ill with a cold. The motherless young man is touched by her kindness, but the respite is short lived and before long the call to war comes. Now commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry, Lewis makes the journey over to France packing a pocketbook of his own poems, which he intends to work on. He arrives in the trenches on his 19th birthday and is soon taking part in a battle near Arras in northern France. It is April 15, 1918, just outside the village of Rie du Vinage, near Arras in northern France. The Somerset Light infantry is still defending the village. With the enemy mounting fierce counterattacks. Mud clings to the boots of the 19 year old CS Lewis as he makes his way over the shell pocked earth. The air vibrates with a thunder of artillery. Smoke and dust choke his lungs. Around him, men shout orders, their faces smeared with grime. Lewis moves forward across the ruined ground. Between craters, shattered timber and half buried coils of wire, there are rumors that the retreating Germans have booby trapped everything. He picks his steps carefully. The silence between bombardments feels as dangerous as the noise. Something skitters beside him, a sudden frantic rustle in the debris. Lewis jerks away, heart jolting as the rat darts from a broken ration tin and vanishes into a fissure in the mud. Catching his moment of panic, a friend of his, Sergeant Ayers, chuckles, but not unkindly. He drops a comforting hand on Lewis's shoulder and opens his mouth to make some gentle jibe. But then the world bursts into white light. Lewis reels as the ground tips away from him. Warmth spreads beneath his tunic. His knees hit the ground. Still stunned, he gropes for the wound. Mud and blood seep between his fingers, and as he realizes he's struggling to breathe, a strange clarity settles over him. Here is a man dying, he thinks. He feels neither fear nor courage. Slowly he becomes aware of hands beneath him. Lifting, he is heaved onto a stretcher, the canvas dipping under his weight. The bearers move swiftly, weaving through chaos. Shells scream overhead, their whistle cutting through the throb in his ears. Each detonation shudders through the ground and up the poles of the stretcher. Pain flares in Lewis chest and along his arm, but beneath it runs a curious floating calm, as if he's drifting above himself. He is alive. Somehow he is still alive. As he is placed aboard an ambulance, he asks about Sergeant Ayers. Did he make it? The silence of the stretcher bearers tells him everything he needs to know. Splinters of the shell that kills Sergeant Ayers also wound Lewis in the leg, hand, face and chest. But though fragments remain in his body for the rest of his life, his injuries prove survivable. After a spell in hospital at Etaples in northern France, Lewis is sent home. By late May 1918, he is well enough to wire his father the address of his hospital. But Albert Lewis, struck down by bronchitis, cannot make the journey even once he recovers. The older man, now in the grip of alcoholism, still fails to visit. It is an act of neglect his injured son never fully forgives. Meanwhile, Lewis's good friend Paddy Moore has been reported missing. His mother, Janie, is swift to come to Lewis's side as she waits, deeply concerned for news of her own son. But in September 1918, the news arrives that Paddy has been killed. Mere weeks later, Germany agrees to an armistice with the Allied powers, bringing the First World War to a close. After four long years of conflict, Europe begins the slow process of recovery and soldiers are finally able to return to their former lives. The following month, Louis is demobilized and in January 1919, he resumes his studies at Oxford. But he has not forgotten his promise to care for his friend's mother and sister, who now also take up residence in the city. At Oxford, Lewis follows a disciplined academic routine each morning, but every afternoon he cycles to support Janie Moore and her daughter Maureen, helping them financially and with domestic life.
- [21:06]
Historian/Expert
For years people have wondered whether there was more to this relationship than met the eye. And I think we finally got a firm answer to this after the death of Walter Hooper. Now Hooper was Lewis's secretary and then editor and biographer for many years after Lewis's death. And so Hooper studied Lewis's life more closely than anybody. And he knew many of Lewis's friends and colleagues. And one of these close friends, Owen Barfield, told Hooper, but Lewis had told him that yes, the relationship with Mrs. Moore was for some years at the start a romantic one. They had an affair.
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Narrator
Yet the unusual situation doesn't seem to get in the way of Lewis's work. Now, aged 20, he publishes his first book of poetry, Spirits in Bondage, under a pseudonym. Though it is neither a critical nor a commercial success, greater things are soon to come from his academic career.
- [22:04]
Historian/Expert
He was a superbly intelligent and hard working student and he got first class results in all his exams in Classics and then he did a second degree in English and again got a first class result. And it was clear that he was always going to be an academic. He was not cut out for anything else. Mr. Kirkpatrick had said that years before. You may make a scholar of him, he told Albert Lewis, but you'll not make anything else of him.
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Narrator
From October 1924, Lewis serves as a temporary lecturer at University College before being elected a Fellow of Magdalen College in May of the following year. One of Oxford's oldest and largest colleges, it's known for its deer park and riverside grounds. And it's here, as a tutor in English language and literature that Lewis will spend the next 29 years of his life. Unlike most Oxford dons who live as bachelors, Lewis continues to share his domestic world with Moore, who is by now in her 50s. In his new post, Louis earns around 30,000 pounds a year in today's money, though not a fortune. The role also comes with accommodation and meals taken care of, allowing him to live more than comfortably. A big, red faced man, his style is bluff and often bombastic. The boozy gatherings he hosts for Magdalen's all male students can quickly turn bawdy. His approach is not to everyone's taste, and his sparring relationship with one of his early students, the future Poet laureate John Betjeman, shows how divisive he can be.
- [23:40]
Historian/Expert
Early in his career, Lewis could be quite heavy handed with his pupils, and I don't think he always knew the force of his own personality in the early years. And so one or two students have said that he was a bit of an intellectual bully, and I think that was probably true to a certain extent in the 1920s, but I think he grew out of that. And he recognized eventually in himself that he had a tendency to what he called bow wow dogmatism, shouting everybody down until I have no friends left. So eventually he knew that he needed to moderate his own intellectual powerhouse and accommodate his own capacities to other people and not always be arguing for victory. Determined to prove his point
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Narrator
despite such tensions, Lewis makes friends in Oxford too, most famously with the writer J.R.R. tolkien, who is appointed to a professorship the same year that Lewis becomes a Fellow at Magdalen. Six years older, Tolkien is a married man, more cautious and sensitive by nature than the energetic, sociable Lewis. But the pair have plenty in common, including a deep interest in myths, the Greek and Roman stories, Norse mythology and the Icelandic sagas. Tolkien establishes an Icelandic reading group and Lewis becomes a member. Yet their friendship is not purely intellectual. It quickly becomes spiritual, too.
- [25:12]
Historian/Expert
Lewis, at this stage, was still calling himself an atheist. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and had been since childhood, and it was in no small part because of Tolkien's encouragement and influence that Lewis began to consider Christianity more seriously, or perhaps I should say reconsider it, because we mustn't forget that Lewis had been raised in a Christian family and he'd been taken to church every Sunday and taught all the usual Christian things, and he'd been baptized and confirmed, so he had a Christian grounding. But then for about two decades, really from about his early teens to his early 30s, he wasn't calling himself a Christian. And it was in no small part Tolkien who helped him get back into the practice of the faith.
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Narrator
In the summer of 1929, Lewis undergoes a mystical experience on a bus going up Headington Hill to Janie Moore's house. Writing about the experience later, he compares himself with a snowman who is, in his words, at last beginning to melt in his college rooms. That summer, he finds himself compelled to begin praying again for the first time in years.
- [26:24]
Historian/Expert
Lewis conversion to Christianity was really the hinge about which his whole life turned. I think it's fair to say he became first of all a theist. He, he came to believe in God and then a year or so later, came to believe in a Christian understanding of God. And after that point, his whole life changed. He really was, as Walter Hooper put it, the most thoroughly converted man that you could meet. His whole life now revolved around his newfound faith, and so he began to write on Christian themes.
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Narrator
The beginning of Lewis eventual return to Christianity marks the end of his romantic relationship with Janie Moore, though they remain extremely close. But just as his faith is reforming, it is tested by the illness of his father, whom Lewis crosses the Irish Channel to see in August 1929. Though aware that his father has been unwell, he is taken aback by his frail appearance. The doctors are slow to diagnose bowel cancer, but Lewis and his father have a brief window to reconcile before Albert dies in September. Warni, stationed as a soldier in Shanghai, is unable to return home until the following April. His grief stricken younger brother is instead comforted by his deepening friendship with Tolkien.
- [27:55]
Historian/Expert
It ignited, people say, when Tolkien shared with Lewis a story that he was writing, which is called the Lay of Laythean. And that was quite a vulnerable step for Tolkien to take to share with Lewis this work that he had in progress. Because, you know, it's always a bit risky to share your imaginings with another person because they might scorn what you're trying to do, they might just fail to understand it. But Lewis responded very warmly and enthusiastically. So they discovered. Oh, we can share that aspect too. Our creativity. Not just our intellectual and academic side, but our creative processes as well.
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Narrator
Although Tolkien never finishes the story, his sharing of it with Lewis marks the beginning of a creative circle known as the Inklings.
- [28:48]
Historian/Expert
The Inklings really grew up out of the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien. I think it's fair to say they were at the heart of it. They provided the nucleus of the group, and because they got into the habit of meeting every week, at least during term time, for a chat about the works they were writing and their shared interests, gradually other of their colleagues and friends began to join them. They tended to meet on Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and Child pub before lunchtime. In addition to that, they would begin to meet on Thursday evenings in Lewis's college rooms at Magdalen. And that's where they shared the manuscripts of their books that they had underway.
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Narrator
Though Tolkien's most famous work, the Lord of the Rings, is still many years away, he will later acknowledge a deep gratitude to Lewis for his early encouragement. He describes his younger friend's enthusiasm as an unpayable debt that persuaded him that his stories could be more than a private hobby. Not long after their father's death, Lewis and Warnie sell the family home in Belfast and together with Janie Moore, buy a house called the Kilns on the outside of Oxford. In 1932, Warnie retires from the army and moves into the household. The setup is not without its flare ups of jealousy, with both Moore and Warnie, a lifelong bachelor with a fondness for whiskey, vying for Lewis's attention. But it's in this unconventional domestic arrangement that some of Lewis most enduring works will take shape. Lewis rediscovery of faith sparks a surge of creativity. In the 1930s, he publishes the Pilgrim's Regress, a Christian novel for general readers, and the Allegory of Love, an academic study of medieval literature. Both sell modestly but do not trouble the best seller lists. Then, in 1938, he takes a surprising step into science fiction, launching what is known as his space trilogy. A year later, war breaks out across Europe and Warni is recalled to active service, still carrying shrapnel in his lung. Lewis remains in Oxford, serving as an air raid warden when needed. Soon, though, he is asked to provide a different kind of support.
- [31:19]
Historian/Expert
In 1940, he was asked to write a book on the problem of pain from a Christian vantage point. And then he was asked to give some talks on the faith for the BBC. And little by little, usually as a result of invitations, not because of his own proactive decision making, he found himself occupying the role of what has been called everyman's theologian, a popular defender of the faith. And, of course, because of the Second World War, when people were facing up to likely death or early death or the possibility of invasion or being bombed out, questions of life and death and meaning and purpose were much more on people's minds than at ordinary times.
- [32:03]
Narrator
Wartime is a fertile period for Lewis. In the Problem of Pain, he addresses the question of why, if God is good and all powerful, he allows us to suffer. The following year, Lewis captures the public's imagination with the Screwtape Letters, which first appear as weekly installments in a church newspaper. Framed as correspondence, in which the senior devil, Screwtape, instructs a junior demon on the art of tempting a human. The series proves immensely popular and is collected into book form in 1942. Its success spreads, even landing him a spot on the COVID of Time magazine a few years later. His household in Oxford also helps with the war effort by welcoming young evacuees from London.
- [32:50]
Historian/Expert
The household took in a number of schoolgirls, boys, girls, never boys, who lived at the kilns for various lengths of time. One of the schoolgirls, June Fluitt, became very fond of C.S. lewis. In fact, she. There's quite an amusing story about June Fluitt. She arrived at the house having read the Screwtape letters and really admiring it. And Mrs. Moore never referred to Jack as C.S. lewis. He was always Uncle Jack. So June never realized that the author of her favorite book was the man in whose house she was living. And when she finally did connect the two, it was, you know, a glorious moment. I think she began to develop a bit of a crush on Lewis. She was a very bright spot in their household. She was always popular and did all her chores without complaining. And Lewis and his brother Warnie were very fond of her.
- [33:45]
Narrator
Later in the war, Lewis delivers lectures and records further talks for the BBC, most successfully Mere Christianity, which is later published in print.
- [33:55]
Historian/Expert
Although it's written for the ear when it was turned into a book later in 1952, it works very well on the page because it immediately grabs the reader and faces them with deep questions, difficult questions, challenging questions, and doesn't let go because Lewis knew how to land his points. He was a dialectician. He was a debater. One of the things he did at Oxford was to be president of the Socratic Club, in which he showed his skills as a debater, you know, because he had a brilliantly trained, rational mind. Thanks to William kirkpatpatrick, but he also had these skills in imagery and poetry.
- [34:41]
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- [35:08]
Historian/Expert
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Narrator
the war are a difficult time for Lewis. In 1948 he takes part in a debate at the Socratic Club with the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, who challenges a key argument in a book of his miracles. At least one biographer believes she inspires the White Witch in Lewis most famous book, but either way the encounter is humiliating for the writer and persuades him to revise later editions. At home, Warnie struggles increasingly with alcoholism, Janie Moore's health is failing and things feel strangely quiet with the evacuees now gone.
- [36:15]
Historian/Expert
It's worth remembering that the opening sentence of Lewis's most famous work, the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, runs like this. This story is about four children who were taken away from London during the war because of the air raids to live in the house of an old professor who lived by himself in the countryside. I don't know that Lewis absolutely needed to have had evacuees living in his own household in order to come up with the first Narnia story. But clearly there was a connection there.
- [36:44]
Narrator
An image that had lingered in his mind for years of a fawn hurriedly crossing a snow covered landscape, parcels in hand, finally leaps onto the page. From that single picture grows the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is published in 1950 as the first installment in the Chronicles of Narnia, a series that eventually includes seven books. The novel tells the story of four evacuees who step through a wardrobe into the frozen world of Narnia, ruled by the White Witch. It is a land of talking animals and mythical creatures who await redemption by the noble lion Aslan. It marks Louis debut as an author of children's literature and quickly finds an audience becoming his most beloved work.
- [37:31]
Historian/Expert
There are many reasons why Narnia has become so popular and the first book, the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, especially popular. One of them, of course, is that Lewis was just incredibly well read in myths and fables and fairy tales. He knew as a literary critic and literary historian how a good story should unfold, so he had that skill set in his locker. The story is largely the gospel story, reimagined in Narnian terms. You know, you have Aslan, the Christ figure who sacrifices himself out of love for the treacherous Edmund, who has betrayed his brother and sisters. And of course, Lewis, as we've already said, was a profoundly converted man. So there's that personal dimension too, that he's infusing into the story story in the character of Edmund. It's interesting, Lewis says, there came a year in my life when I felt I must write a fairy tale or burst. He was sort of big with this idea. It been growing in him, bubbling up in him for years. And then one day it, as it were, burst out of him. So I think it's one of those examples of a story that a person is sort of born to write.
- [38:46]
Narrator
Though Lewis originally envisages the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a standalone work, the subsequent six volumes in the Chronicles expand on the world of Narnia. With a cast of returning characters, they explore cycles of tyranny and liberation, quests and adventures, and Christian themes of spiritual and moral growth. The Chronicles have their critics not least close to home. Tolkien considers them scrappily put together, and compared with his richly detailed Middle Earth, the World of Narnia seems less intricate. Readers, however, are enchanted. And though it takes a few years for the Narnia books to be truly cemented, sales increase year on year. By now, Lewis commitment to the Christian principle of charity has prompted him to set up a fundamental through which he anonymously distributes the majority of his royalties, something he will continue to do throughout his life as his literary career continues to ascend. Louis declines a CBE from the king in 1951, not wishing for his work to be politicized. The same year brings a personal loss with the death of Janie Moore, his steadfast companion for decades. Yet as one important woman leaves, another is about to enter. Around now a 35 year old American reader, Joy Gresham begins writing to Lewis. A keen correspondent, he has numerous pen pals, so this is not unusual in itself.
- [40:19]
Historian/Expert
Joy was a feisty New Yorker. Everybody said that of her. She was Jewish by race, but her parents had never really practiced the Jewish religion. So she was a pretty secular Jew, very bright. And she was a writer. She wrote some novels. She was for a brief period a communist. She went back and forth between strongly held opinions here and strongly held opinions there. And I think it was only when she finally settled down to a Christian experience that she began to acquire a sort of stability in her life.
- [40:54]
Narrator
When their correspondence begins, Joy is married to a writer called Bill Gresham, with two young sons, David and Douglas. But the marriage is not a happy one. In the late summer of 1952, joy crosses the Atlantic alone and pays a visit to Oxford to meet Lewis in person for the first time. Short in stature, sharp tongued and audacious, she charms Lewis and is invited to spend Christmas at the kilns. The stay stretches to a fortnight, during which she confides in Lewis about her collapsing marriage and her husband's affair with her cousin. After her return to New York, the two stay in touch and she comes back to the UK the following year. This time she brings her sons and plans to remain in England for good. Cold War era America is not an ideal place for a former communist. By now Lewis is working on a new academic text on 16th century literature. But further changes are afoot when he is offered and accepts the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge in 1954, on his 56th birthday, he gives his inaugural lecture there, attended by Joy. Though he will keep the kilns and return at weekends and holidays, it is an enormous change for him after almost 30 years as an Oxford don. That summer, Joy's divorce is finalized and the following year she moves to Oxford with her sons, confiding to a friend that she has fallen in love with Lewis. For all his intellectual brilliance, Lewis isn't aware of Joy's feelings. He thinks their relationship is merely platonic. While she helps him shape his books, Lewis pays Joy's rent and the school fees for her boys. But in 1956, the British Home Office refuses Joy a permit to remain in England.
- [42:53]
Historian/Expert
She took her problem to CS Lewis and he said, well, I could marry you. I could extend to you my British citizenship and that way you wouldn't have to go back to America. But it would be a formal arrangement, only you wouldn't live together as man and wife. It's just a way of helping you out. And she took that offer. And they did indeed get married in a registry office in Oxford. But nobody was told. Apart from the registrar and the legal witness, everybody else was kept in the dark, and indeed they did not live together as husband and wife. She kept her own house, she kept her own name, and nobody knew about it.
- [43:38]
Narrator
That autumn, however, she undergoes X rays after a nasty fall. Though these reveal that she has broken her thigh bone, the worst discovery is that of a lump in her left breast. A biopsy reveals the tumor is malignant, and later the cancer is pronounced incurable. Lewis is devastated by the news it
- [43:59]
Historian/Expert
was thought that she was going to die, and faced with the prospect of losing her, Lewis thought to himself, well, actually, I'm rather fond of this lady. Perhaps we should get married properly.
- [44:12]
Narrator
The priest, they ask, is initially resistant because Joy is a divorcee. But when Lewis explains that they are already legally married, the objection falls away. It is the morning of March 21, 1957, in the Churchill Hospital, Oxford. The ward sister moves from patient to patient with a sprightly step. The fob watch at her waist ticks steadily as she checks charts and adjusts pillows. It's always busy during visiting hours and the corridor is already starting to fill with relatives and friends clutching flowers and fruit. Spotting a small group heading towards Mrs. Gresham's room, the sister slips in to check on her patient. Mrs. Gresham looks visibly drained. She has had bad news about her cancer, and it shows in the pallor of her cheeks, which look particularly white today against her dark hair. But when she's told her visitors are on their way, she brightens up and tries to sit up a little. She explains that there is to be a marriage ceremony that morning. Might the nurse serve as a witness? The ward sister smiles back, squeezes her patient's hand, and agrees without hesitation. No need to ask who the bridegroom will be. The large, red faced professor is one of the ward's most regular visitors. No sooner has she agreed than the room fills up with the visitors. An Anglican priest, prayer book in hand, takes his position at the foot of the bed, while another man with a mustache and a military bearing is introduced as Warnie, soon to become the patient's brother in law. The famous writer himself stands beside the bed next to his fiance, his hands folded awkwardly. He glances shyly towards Mrs. Gresham, who returns his look with a grin. The room settles into a hush. The priest clears his throat, lifts his book, and begins the familiar words.
- [46:24]
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Historian/Expert
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Historian/Expert
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- [47:25]
Narrator
hospital shortly after the wedding, Joy is taken to the kilns and enjoys what feels like a miraculous remission from her illness. Married life brings Louis a happiness he has never known. The couple are able to enjoy a honeymoon in Ireland, and Lewis returns to his writing. With Joy's help, he works on his books, Reflections on the Psalms and the Four Loves. But in October 1959, a checkup reveals that Joy's cancer has returned, and by March 1960, it is no longer responding to treatment. In April, Louis takes her to Greece to fulfill her lifelong wish to visit the country, but her condition worsens shortly after their return. In July 1960, she passes away. The man who once wrote to a friend, ink is the greatest cure for all human ills begins to record his thoughts. He puts aside fiction and commits to processing his devastation on the page. The book that results, A Grief Observed, is published under the pseudonym NW Clark. It opens with the enduring line, no one ever told me grief felt so like fear. Lewis did not outlive his wife for long. Three years later, his kidneys start to fail, and he dies in Warnie's arms about a week before his 65th birthday. His death coincides with the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, and later on the same day, fellow English writer Aldous Huxley dies in California. Too heartbroken to attend his brother's funeral, Warnie lies in bed drinking whiskey. But he rallies sufficiently to make an important decision about his gravestone.
- [49:23]
Historian/Expert
His brother Warney chose the inscription on the tombstone, which is a line from Shakespeare, men must endure their going hence. The vicar of the church said, oh, you ought to have a passage from Scripture, from the Bible, not from Shakespeare. But Warny said, no, no, no, it's got to be this. Men must endure their going hence. It's a line from King Learn, and it had been on the family's Shakespeare calendar on the day that their Mother died back in 1908, and Warny had remembered this all those years
- [49:56]
Narrator
after his death. His influence only grows cemented as beloved classics, the Chronicles of Narnia are never out of print and are adapted for screen and stage. His life also inspires films such as Shadowlands, about his marriage and the most reluctant Convert about his return to Christianity. A number of societies and organizations have also formed to commemorate his life and work, including the Illinois Archive that houses the famous wardrobe. And in 2013, 50 years after his death, Lewis is honored with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner, sealing his position among the greats. Endlessly creative. By merging his deeply held faith with a passion for words, C.S. lewis transformed children's literature and expanded Christian thought. But for innumerable readers across the globe, he was less of a mere writer and more a builder of worlds, a man who built a door to a universe and dared us to step inside.
- [51:05]
Historian/Expert
Lewis has become one of our most successful writers because he read everything and remembered everything. He, you know, wrote children's fiction, but also adult novels and books of literary criticism, literary history, books of Christian apologetics. So he was just able to turn his hand to almost any different kind of genre or medium that he wished to. His toolbox as a stage stylist had every available tool, you know, from a sledgehammer to a scalpel and everything in between. He could write books that appeal to 7 year old kids, but also write books that, you know, satisfied the most learned professors at Oxford and the most devout archbishops in the Church of England. There are very few people who can hit so many different marks in so many different ways with such degrees of success.
- [52:07]
Narrator
Next time on Short History of we'll bring you a short history of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
- [52:15]
Historian/Expert
Franz Ferdinand could see that a war with Serbia would start off all kinds of terrible things around Europe. He didn't want a world war. He would have been horrified, absolutely horrified at what happened. He could certainly see that if Austria went to war with Serbia, then the Russians would pile in and help Serbia and, you know, all these alliances would then bring the whole of Europe to flames, to a terrible war. And that would also destroy so many of the royal families of Europe, which is what it did.
- [52:44]
Narrator
That's Next time you can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of Right now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noizr plus just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.comsubscriptions to unlock more
- [53:03]
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