C.S Lewis

by Steven Moore

The children's tales so lovingly created by C.S. Lewis are now reaching a new generation with the release this month (December) of the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe.

   It also brings into the spotlight once again the Ulster-born creator of this fantasyland - Clive Staples Lewis.

   The author and academic was born in East Belfast on November 29, 1898, the second son of Albert and Florence Lewis.

   His mother died from cancer in 1908 and the following month the nine-year-old Lewis was sent to England, where he was enrolled at Wynyard School in Watford, Herfordshire, where his brother Warren was already a pupil.

Belfast born author C.S Lewis

   After two years his father brought him back to Belfast, where he was enrolled as a boarder at Campbell College, but was again in England before Christmas that year, staying at the resort of Malvern to help him recover from respiratory probems.

   He remained in Great Britain, where he completed his education including private study under W.T.ÊKirkpatrick, a former principal of Lurgan College in Co Armagh.

   Lewis volunteered for service during the First World War and was sent to France as a commissioned officer in November, 1917, arriving on the Somme sector on his 19th birthday. In April the following year he was wounded and, though he returned to duty in October, he was not sent back to the front.

   In 1919, Lewis recommenced his studies at University College, Oxford, where he was to remain until 1924, earning Firsts in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English.

   His student days over, Lewis began his teaching career, serving as a philosophy tutor at University College as temporary cover for an absent colleague in 1924-25, then moving to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was elected a Fellow and was to remain as a tutor in English language and literature for 29 years.

   During the Second World War he gave a number of live radio talks, many on Christianity, which he had rediscovered after years of being a non-believer.

   In September 1952, he met the woman who was to be the great love of his life. Joy Davidman Gresham, who 15 years his junior, was an American in the process of breaking up with her husband.

   She was diagnosed with cancer shortly after their first meeting and the pair married in 1956, initially to give her British citizenship as she was threatened with deportation, and followed this up with a religious service at her hospital bedside.

   Joy recovered sufficiently for the couple to enjoy a few happy years together, but then relapsed and died in the summer of 1960.

A memorial to C.S. Lewis is erected at Holywood Arches in East Belfast, near to where he was born.

   On November 22, 1963 - the same day that President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, C.S. Lewis died at his English home, The Kilns, just a week short of what would have been his 65th birthday.

   He was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford, and now lies alongside his brother Warren, who died 10 years later in April, 1973.

   Their headstone bears the inscription "Men must endure their going hence," taken from a Shakespearean calendar which hung in the room where their mother died.

- Steven Moore is a News Letter journalist.