THE
P RTAL
C. S. Lewis
by Fr Keith Robinson
March 2013
Page 7
Anglican
Luminary
Charles Staples Lewis must be one of the greatest Christian apologists of the first half of the
twentieth century, whose work is valued by Christians of all traditions. His father a solicitor, his maternal
grandfather an Anglican priest, he was born in Belfast in 1898. Father seems to have been a somewhat distant
figure, and after his mother’s death from cancer when he was nine, his education consisted of attendance at a
number of different schools interspersed with private tuition.
He had a fascination with
the writings of Beatrix
Potter and made up stories
about
anthropomorphic
animals. However, this
bright student gave up the
faith of his upbringing
and announced himself
an atheist at the age of
fifteen, at which point he
was at Malvern College in
Worcestershire. He later
admitted to having been
“very angry with God for
not existing”!
the “Inklings”
England!
autobiography
In 1954, he left Oxford,
where he nevertheless
retained a house, to take
up the Chair of Medieval
and Renaissance Literature
at Magdalene College
Cambridge.
He had already written
his autobiography, entitled
Surprised by Joy, when he
began a friendship with
an American writer, Joy
Gresham, which in 1956 led
to him marrying her when
he was fifty-eight, in rather
unusual circumstances.
He gained a scholarship to
University College Oxford
in 1916, but enlisted in the
Army the following year.
During this time he became
Sadly Joy died of bone
a close friend of Paddy
cancer in 1960. In A
Moore, and it appears that they made a pact that if Grief Observed he wrote about his experience of this
either of them was killed in action, the survivor would bereavement under a pseudonym, and the book was
take responsibility for the other’s family.
so powerful that many of his friends recommended it
to him!
Lewis was wounded on 15 April 1918, at the Battle
of Arras, and Moore was killed. Discharged from the Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry
Charles himself died of renal failure at his Oxford home
Army the following year Lewis put the pact into action.
on the 22 November 1963, and is buried in the churchyard
He and his brother moved into a house with Mrs of Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry. However, his death
Moore and her daughter in Oxford. Lewis resumed was completely overshadowed by the assassination of US
his academic career with great distinction, and in President Kennedy, which occurred on the very same
May 1925 was appointed Fellow and Tutor in English day. Lewis’s earlier interest in Irish mythology during his
Literature at Magdalen College Oxford, a post in which period as an atheist later fed into his fantasy writings,
especially for children, the most famous of which are the
he remained until 1954.
Chronicles of Narnia, of which well over one hundred
During this time he became a member of the Oxford million copies have been sold in over 41 languages.
literary group known as the “Inklings”. Here he formed
They have also reached a wider audience on stage,
a close friendship with the Catholic J R R Tolkien. Also
greatly influenced by the writings of Catholic convert TV and cinema. But The Four Loves, Mere Christianity,
G K Chesterton, he converted in 1931 to Christianity, The Problem of Pain and Miracles remain remarkable
but to Tolkien’s disappointment, to the Church of examples of his Christian apologetics.