Pod Insights Short History Of... C.S. Lewis About this episode 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?
This is a Short History Of C. S. Lewis.
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Dr Michael Ward from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis.
Written by Nicola Rayner | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check: Sean Coleman
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Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 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.
0:23 Speaker 00 To entertain himself, the boy, called Jack by his family, studies his parents' friends and lets his imagination roam.
0:34 Speaker 00 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.
0:49 Speaker 00 Jack bites back a grin, and his mother catches him, reaching out to ruffle his hair.
0:55 Speaker 00 He pulls an exaggerated grimace to amuse her, then shoots a conspiratorial look towards his older brother. Nine-year-old Warney is perched stiffly on the edge of a straight-backed chair, chin lifted like a soldier.
1:10 Speaker 00 Jack guesses he's pretending the room is a parade ground rather than an Edwardian parlor.
1:18 Speaker 00 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.
1:34 Speaker 00 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 Warney'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.
2:18 Speaker 00 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.
2:31 Speaker 00 Nearly as tall as the ceiling, it has elaborately carved doors, the handiwork of his grandfather. Touching the scrollwork, Jack opens the door.
2:42 Speaker 00 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 too, close enough to hide him, but not quite shut. Everyone knows you must never shut yourself inside a wardrobe.
3:08 Speaker 00 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 the thoroughness of an officer inspecting his barracks.
3:22 Speaker 00 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.
3:37 Speaker 00 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.
4:06 Speaker 00 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.
4:17 Speaker 00 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.
4:35 Speaker 00 But how were the seeds of the magical world of Narnia first planted? How did Lewis's 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
5:19 Speaker 00 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. Lewis.
5:46 Speaker 01 C.S. Lewis's 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 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.
6:25 Speaker 00 He adores his mother, but the most enduring relationship of his life is with his older brother, Warren.
6:33 Speaker 00 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.
6:45 Speaker 01 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 learnt to entertain themselves 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.
7:15 Speaker 00 An early childhood favourite 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.
7:27 Speaker 00 In 1905, when he is six, the family moves to an Edwardian-style villa called Little Lee. In the attic, the two brothers carve out a refuge away from the grown-ups. And it's up here that Jack finds a very special piece of furniture.
7:43 Speaker 01 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".
8:16 Speaker 00 Warnie, however, does not have long to enjoy the new family home before he is sent to England to attend Winyard 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.
8:38 Speaker 00 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 Warnie 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.
8:58 Speaker 01 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.
9:39 Speaker 00 Warnie, however, is one of those singled out for punishment. And soon, Jack is writing letters home suggesting the brothers attend a day's school in Belfast instead. His appeals fall on deaf ears, but soon, the canings at Winyard 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.
10:05 Speaker 00 By now, Warnie 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 twelve, he attends Sherborg, a small school of only seventeen 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 fifteen years.
10:33 Speaker 00 When he is old enough, Jack wins a scholarship to Malvern College, his brother's school. But in the same year, Warnie is caught smoking and ejected, and turns instead to working towards entry to the officer-training college at Sandhurst.
10:48 Speaker 00 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 fifteen.
11:04 Speaker 01 Lewis was so bright, he was so intelligent. He was obviously leagues ahead of everybody else of his own age, that eventually his dad realised 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's 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.
11:48 Speaker 00 But before he sets foot in Surrey, the wider world is shaken by a crisis, when Europe is engulfed in war. Warnie is rushed through his officer-training at Sandhurst, and by November 1914, he's at the front in France.
12:04 Speaker 00 Jack, still a teenager, experiences a more peaceful autumn.
12:08 Speaker 01 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.
12:33 Speaker 00 Here, Jack starts to work on his own poetry, aspiring to follow in the literary footsteps of fellow Irishman W.B. Yeats. 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.
12:56 Speaker 00 This October on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.
13:38 Speaker 00 Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
13:46 Speaker 00 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, and a grand piano. But his life of comfort prickles his conscience, while so many are risking their lives.
14:11 Speaker 01 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.
14:59 Speaker 00 After a brief period of training, Louis 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.
15:15 Speaker 00 But the respite is short-lived, and before long the call to war comes.
15:20 Speaker 00 Now commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry, Louis makes the journey over to France, packing a pocketbook of his own poems, which he intends to work on.
15:31 Speaker 00 He arrives in the trenches on his nineteenth birthday, and is soon taking part in a battle near Arras in northern France.
15:44 Speaker 00 It is April the fifteenth, nineteen eighteen, just outside the village of Riez du Vinage, near Arras in northern France.
15:53 Speaker 00 The Somerset Light Infantry is still defending the village, with the enemy mounting fierce counterattacks. Mud clings to the boots of the nineteen-year-old C.S. Louis as he makes his way over the shell-pock'd 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. Louis moves forward across the ruined ground, between craters, shattered timber, and half-buried coils of wire. There are rumours that the retreating Germans have booby-trapped everything. He picks his steps carefully. The silence between bombardments feels as dangerous as the noise.
16:38 Speaker 00 Something skitters beside him, a sudden frantic rustle in the debris. Louis jerks away, heart jolting, as the rat darts from a broken ration tin and vanishes into a fissure in the mud.
16:53 Speaker 00 Catching his moment of panic, a friend of his, Sergeant Ayers, chuckles, but not unkindly. He drops a comforting hand on Louis's shoulder and opens his mouth to make some gentle gibe, but then the world bursts into white light.
17:10 Speaker 00 Louis 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.
17:31 Speaker 00 "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.
17:51 Speaker 00 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 Louis's 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.
18:36 Speaker 00 Splinters of the shell that kills Sergeant Ayers also wound Louis 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 Eteplé in northern France, Louis is sent home.
18:56 Speaker 00 By late May 1918, he is well enough to wire his father the address of his hospital. But Albert Louis, struck down by bronchitis, cannot make the journey.
19:07 Speaker 00 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.
19:21 Speaker 00 Meanwhile, Lewis's good friend Paddy Moore has been reported missing. His mother, Janey, 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.
19:38 Speaker 00 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.
19:58 Speaker 00 The following month, Lewis 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.
20:13 Speaker 00 At Oxford, Lewis follows a disciplined academic routine each morning. But every afternoon, he cycles to support Janey Moore and her daughter Maureen, helping them financially and with domestic life.
20:26 Speaker 01 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 that 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.
21:05 Speaker 00 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.
21:24 Speaker 01 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."
21:52 Speaker 00 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.
22:17 Speaker 00 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, Lewis earns around £30,000 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.
22:59 Speaker 01 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 recognised 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
23:41 Speaker 01 and not always be arguing for victory and determined to prove his point.
23:49 Speaker 00 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.
24:02 Speaker 00 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.
24:26 Speaker 00 Yet their friendship is not purely intellectual; it quickly becomes spiritual too.
24:32 Speaker 01 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.
25:19 Speaker 00 In the summer of 1929, Lewis undergoes a mystical experience on a bus going up Headington Hill to Janey 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.
25:43 Speaker 01 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 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.
26:21 Speaker 00 The beginning of Lewis’s 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.
26:43 Speaker 00 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.
27:01 Speaker 00 Warnie, 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.
27:14 Speaker 01 It ignited, people say, when Tolkien shared with Lewis a story that he was writing, which is called “The Lay of Lathien”. 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, you can share that aspect too, our creativity, not just our intellectual and academic side, but our creative processes as well.”
28:00 Speaker 00 Although Tolkien never finishes the story, his sharing of it with Lewis marks the beginning of a creative circle known as the Inklings.
28:08 Speaker 01 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 Maudlin, and that's where they shared the manuscripts of their books that they had underway.
28:51 Speaker 00 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.
29:11 Speaker 00 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 whisky, vying for Lewis's attention. But it's in this unconventional domestic arrangement that some of Lewis's most enduring works will take shape.
29:47 Speaker 00 Lewis's rediscovery of faith sparks a surge of creativity.
29:53 Speaker 00 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.
30:05 Speaker 00 Both sell modestly, but do not trouble the bestseller 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 Warnie is recalled to active service.
30:27 Speaker 00 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.
30:38 Speaker 01 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 every man'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.
31:22 Speaker 00 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.
31:43 Speaker 00 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 cover of Time magazine a few years later. His household in Oxford also helps with the war effort by welcoming young evacuees from London.
32:10 Speaker 01 The household took in a number of schoolgirls, boys' girls, no, boys, who lived at the Killens for various lengths of time. One of the schoolgirls, June Flewett, became very fond of C.S. Lewis. In fact, she... There's quite an amusing story about June Flewett. 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 realised that the author of her favourite 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.
32:53 Speaker 01 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.
33:04 Speaker 00 Later in the war, Lewis delivers lectures and records further talks for the BBC, most successfully 'Mere Christianity', which is later published in print.
33:15 Speaker 01 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 Kirkpatrick. But he also had these skills in imagery and poetry.
34:00 Speaker 00 This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, 'Real Dictators' returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On 'Short History Of', we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On 'Real Survival Stories', a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In 'Jane Austen Stories', Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four.
34:43 Speaker 00 Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
34:51 Speaker 00 The years after 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's most famous book. But either way, the encounter is humiliating for the writer, and persuades him to revise later editions.
35:19 Speaker 00 At home, Warnes struggles increasingly with alcoholism, Janie Moore's health is failing, and things feel strangely quiet with the evacuees now gone.
35:28 Speaker 01 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.
35:58 Speaker 00 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 awaits redemption by the noble lion Aslan. It marks Lewis's debut as an author of children's literature,
36:41 Speaker 00 and quickly finds an audience, becoming his most beloved work.
36:45 Speaker 01 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.
37:27 Speaker 01 So there's that personal dimension too, that he's infusing into the 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'd been growing in him, bubbling up in him for years. And then one day, 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.
37:59 Speaker 00 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.
38:21 Speaker 00 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.
38:44 Speaker 00 By now, Lewis's commitment to the Christian principle of charity has prompted him to set up a fund 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, Lewis 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.
39:20 Speaker 00 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.
39:33 Speaker 01 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 her Christian experience that she began to acquire a sort of stability in her life.
40:08 Speaker 00 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.
40:47 Speaker 00 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.
41:03 Speaker 00 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 thirty 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.
41:44 Speaker 00 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.
42:00 Speaker 00 But in 1956, the British Home Office refuses Joy a permit to remain in England.
42:06 Speaker 01 She took her problem to C.S. 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.
42:51 Speaker 00 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.
43:12 Speaker 01 It 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."
43:25 Speaker 00 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.
43:39 Speaker 00 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.
44:12 Speaker 00 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?
44:38 Speaker 00 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 moustache and a military bearing is introduced as Warnie, soon to become the patient's brother-in-law.
45:08 Speaker 00 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.
45:21 Speaker 00 The room settles into a hush. The priest clears his throat, lifts his book, and begins the familiar words.
45:37 Speaker 00 This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world.
46:08 Speaker 00 In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
46:28 Speaker 00 Upon leaving the 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 Louis returns to his writing. With Joy's help, he works on his books, Reflections on the Psalms and The Four Loves.
46:53 Speaker 00 But in October 1959, a checkup reveals that Joy's cancer has returned, and by March 1960, it is no longer responding to treatment.
47:03 Speaker 00 In April, Lewis 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.
47:17 Speaker 00 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 N.W. Clarke. It opens with the enduring line, "No one ever told me grief felt so like fear."
47:51 Speaker 00 Lewis does 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.
48:14 Speaker 00 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.
48:26 Speaker 01 His brother Warnie 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 Warnie said, "No, no, no, it's got to be this: 'Men must endure their going hence.' It's a line from King Lear, and it had been on the family's Shakespeare calendar on the day that their mother died, back in 1908. And Warnie had remembered this all those years.
49:00 Speaker 00 After his death, his influence only grows.
49:04 Speaker 00 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.
49:21 Speaker 00 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, fifty years after his death, Lewis is honored with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, sealing his position among the greats.
49:43 Speaker 00 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.
50:08 Speaker 01 Lewis has become one of our most successful writers because
50:14 Speaker 01 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 stylist had every available tool, you know, from a sledgehammer to a scalpel and everything in between. He could write books that appealed to seven-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.
51:10 Speaker 00 Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
51:19 Speaker 02 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 he did.
51:48 Speaker 00 That's next time.
51:52 Speaker 00 You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today. This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world.
52:38 Speaker 00 In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
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