Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of British writer, literary scholar, poet, and theologian C.S. Lewis, who is best known for his imaginative and philosophical works that bridged literature, theology, and myth. Lewis’s most famous achievement is The Chronicles of Narnia, a seven-volume fantasy series beloved worldwide for its allegorical exploration of good, evil, and spiritual awakening. A professor at both Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Lewis also wrote influential theological books such as The Screwtape Letters and The Problem of Pain, which made complex religious ideas accessible to a wide audience. His blend of reason, imagination, and faith has made him one of the most enduring and widely read authors of the 20th century.

Clive Staples Lewis was born in 1898 in Belfast, Ireland. His father was a solicitor (a type of lawyer) in Belfast, known for his eloquence and strong personality. His mother was the daughter of an Anglican priest and one of the first women to graduate from Queen’s College Belfast. She was a mathematician and linguist who instilled in her sons a love of learning, literature, and music.

Lewis grew up in a comfortable, book-filled home alongside his older brother, with whom he shared a close lifelong bond. As a child, Lewis was imaginative, introspective, and deeply curious. He loved reading, inventing stories, and creating elaborate fantasy worlds with his brother — complete with maps, histories, and talking animals. Though shy and somewhat solitary, he found joy and refuge in books, mythology, and nature. His early years were marked by a strong sense of wonder and creativity, traits that would later blossom into the rich imaginative landscapes of his fiction.

In 1904, Lewis’s family moved from their home in Belfast to a larger house on the outskirts of the city, where he and his brother continued creating their imaginary world. In 1908, his mother died of cancer — a devastating event that shattered his childhood sense of security. Soon after, his father sent him to Wynyard School in England, a harsh and unhappy environment that he later described as “a dark place.” When the school closed in 1910, Lewis transferred to Campbell College in Belfast but left soon after due to illness, marking the end of a turbulent and emotionally formative period in his youth.

In 1911, Lewis was sent to Cherbourg House, a preparatory school in Malvern, England, and later attended Malvern College, where he began to question his childhood faith and embraced atheism. In 1914, he entered Malvern’s private tutoring program under William T. Kirkpatrick, a brilliant and demanding teacher who profoundly sharpened Lewis’s reasoning and love of classical literature. In 1916, Lewis won a scholarship to University College, Oxford, but his studies were interrupted in 1917 when he enlisted in the British Army during World War I, beginning officer training and soon facing the grim realities of combat in France.

In 1918, Lewis was wounded in battle and sent home to recover, marking the end of his military service. He returned to the University of Oxford, where he completed an extraordinary series of degrees in Classics, Philosophy, and English Literature in rapid succession, all with top honors. During this period, he formed lasting friendships with fellow students and writers, began publishing poetry, and secured a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1925.

Lewis and writer J. R. R. Tolkien shared a deep and influential friendship that began in the 1920s at the University of Oxford, where both were professors and members of the literary group known as The Inklings, an informal literary discussion group at Oxford that lasted for nearly two decades, between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy.

Lewis and Tolkien bonded over their love of myth, language, and storytelling, often reading their works-in-progress to one another — Lewis encouraging Tolkien to complete The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien inspiring Lewis’s own mythic fiction. Their friendship was occasionally strained in later years due to differences in temperament, faith expression, and literary style, but it remained rooted in mutual respect. Ultimately, each profoundly shaped the other’s imagination and legacy.

During the late 1920s, Lewis flourished as an Oxford scholar and underwent a profound spiritual transformation. In 1925, he was appointed Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he gained respect for his sharp intellect and engaging teaching style. His close friendship with Tolkien and other writers, like Owen Barfield, inspired discussions that gradually challenged his atheism. Through deep philosophical reflection and lively debates with his friends, Lewis moved from materialism to belief in God, and in 1931, after a late-night walk with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, he embraced Christianity — an event that would reshape his life and inspire much of his later writing.

On this long legendary late-night walk along Addison’s Walk at Oxford with his friends Tolkien and Dyson, Tolkien helped Lewis see how Christianity could be understood as a “true myth” — a story that was both imaginative and historically real. This discussion profoundly moved Lewis, and within days he experienced a conversion, first to belief in God and soon after to Christianity. That autumn night became one of the most pivotal and celebrated moments in his spiritual journey. Soon afterward, while riding to Whipsnade Zoo, he experienced a quiet inner awakening — later writing that when he set out he did not believe Christ was the Son of God, and when he arrived, he did. That simple, private moment transformed his life and became the spiritual foundation of all his later work.

Lewis’s spiritual perspective centered on the harmony between faith and reason, seeing Christianity as both a rational worldview and a source of profound imaginative truth. A former atheist, he came to believe that longing and joy — what he called “sehnsucht” — were signposts pointing toward God and the divine reality beyond the material world. He viewed myth, beauty, and moral conscience as reflections of eternal truth, and his writings emphasized that faith was not blind belief but a joyful awakening to a deeper, more real universe infused with divine meaning and love.

During the 1930s, Lewis emerged as both a respected academic and a rising literary voice. He continued teaching and publishing scholarly works at Oxford, including The Allegory of Love in 1936, which established his reputation as a leading medieval and Renaissance scholar. During this time, he also began exploring imaginative fiction as a vehicle for spiritual and philosophical ideas, publishing The Pilgrim’s Regress in 1933, his first Christian allegory. Lewis deepened his friendships with members of the Inklings, and in 1938 released Out of the Silent Planet, the first book of his acclaimed Space Trilogy, marking his transition into the realm of mythic science fiction and symbolic storytelling.

In the early 1940s, during World War II, Lewis became one of Britain’s most influential Christian voices. He opened his Oxford home to evacuee children, continued teaching, and began delivering his famous BBC radio broadcasts on Christianity, which later became the book Mere Christianity. He also wrote The Screwtape Letters in 1942, a witty and profound exploration of temptation and faith, and The Great Divorce in 1945, an allegory about heaven and hell. Throughout these war years, Lewis balanced his academic duties with prolific writing and public speaking, earning national recognition for his clarity, warmth, and reasoned defense of faith during a time of global crisis.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lewis reached the height of his fame as both a scholar and a Christian writer. He published Miracles in 1947, defending the possibility of the supernatural, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950, the first and most famous book in The Chronicles of Narnia series. Over the next two years, he continued the series with Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which captivated readers with their imaginative blend of myth and theology. During this time, he also became increasingly well-known to the public through lectures and broadcasts, while maintaining his post at Oxford and mentoring many students.

During the 1950s, Lewis continued to enjoy literary and scholarly success while his personal life underwent profound change. He completed The Chronicles of Narnia series with The Silver Chair in 1953, The Horse and His Boy in 1954, The Magician’s Nephew in 1955, and The Last Battle in 1956, which won the Carnegie Medal. In 1954, he accepted a professorship at Cambridge University, where he became the first Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. During the late 1950s, Lewis formed a close friendship with American writer Joy Davidman Gresham, which deepened into love; they married in a civil ceremony in 1956. These years marked both the culmination of his creative output and the beginning of one of the most emotionally significant relationships of his life.

In the early 1960s, Lewis faced deep personal loss and declining health. In 1960, his wife died of cancer after only a few years of marriage — a tragedy that profoundly affected him and inspired his deeply moving reflection on grief, A Grief Observed, which was published in 1961. Despite his sorrow, Lewis continued teaching at Cambridge and writing essays and letters that revealed both his intellect and spiritual resilience. His own health began to fail during this period, marking the final chapter of his life’s journey.

In the final year of his life, Lewis’s health deteriorated sharply due to heart and kidney problems, forcing him to retire from his Cambridge position. Despite his frailty, he maintained correspondence with friends and readers, expressing serenity and faith. He died peacefully at his home, at the age of 64, in Oxford in 1963 — on the same day that President John F. Kennedy and writer Aldous Huxley also died. His passing marked the end of a life devoted to imagination, scholarship, and the exploration of faith and reason.

The Chronicles of Narnia were adapted into a major film series beginning in 2005 with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, produced by Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures, followed by Prince Caspian in 2008 and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010, bringing C.S. Lewis’s beloved fantasy world to life through modern visual effects and global cinematic success.

Lewis’s legacy endures as that of a brilliant storyteller, scholar, and Christian thinker who bridged imagination and intellect with extraordinary depth. His Chronicles of Narnia continue to enchant readers of all ages, while works like Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce remain foundational texts in modern Christian thought. As a literary scholar, he reshaped the study of medieval and Renaissance literature, and as a writer, he showed how myth and reason together can illuminate spiritual truth. His influence extends across literature, theology, philosophy, and popular culture, inspiring generations to seek meaning through both wonder and wisdom.

Here are some of C.S. Lewis’s most memorable quotes:

Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

You can make anything by writing.

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

by David Jay Brown