Christianity, conflict and catastrophe: the life of CS Lewis
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Who was C.S. Lewis beyond the Narnia books?
We largely know C.S. Lewis as the author of the classic series of children's novels, The Chronicles of Narnia. But who was the man behind the books? In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Michael Ward guides Isabel King through the often tumultuous life of C.S. Lewis, from his tragic childhood to his difficult relationship with the Christian faith.
Hello Michael, welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Thank you for joining me today. Today we're going to explore the life of C.S. Lewis, scholar, storyteller, Christian apologist, and one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. But before we dig deeper into his story, could you give us an overview of C.S. Lewis in a nutshell?
In a nutshell, C.S.
How did Lewis’s Irish upbringing and early family tragedies shape his character?
Lewis was born in eighteen ninety eight and died in nineteen sixty-three. He's best known for the his Narnia books. He was a great friend of Tolkien and was a huge influence on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. And C. S. Lewis continues to be a very preeminent figure, I think, in English letters, not just for his fiction, but also as you mentioned, for his Christian apologetics.
He's often remembered as an English writer, but he was actually born in Belfast. How did this Irish upbringing and his early family life shape him as a person?
Yes, he was born in the north of Ireland. We needn't say Northern Ireland, because the island of Ireland hadn't been divided at that point. He was born into a Christian home. His grandfather was a clergyman, his mother's father. His dad was a lawyer, a very gifted man rhetorically. He had one older brother, whose name was Warren, always known as Warney. No other brothers or sisters. So C.S. Lewis was the younger of two boys. Born into what we might call an upper middle class, comfortable household.
What impact did the harsh boarding‑school experience have on his worldview?
His mother had done a degree in mathematics at a point in history when women's education was not very common, and she got a first-class degree in mathematics. So she was obviously a quite a brainy woman, and she taught her two sons at home. But alas, she died when they were still quite young. Before Lewis was ten years old, his mother died. Died of cancer, which was obviously a great blow to him, and soon after that he was sent away from Ireland to England to be educated.
So he had very educated parents. Did they encourage reading and writing within the household? And did him and his brother tell stories to one another and build their own worlds that may be reflected in Lewis's later work?
Yes, his parents were definitely great encouragers of r reading among their two boys. Lewis talks about this in his autobiography, that there were books everywhere in the house, and he was forbidden none of them, he said, and he had the same assurance of finding a new book whenever he went to his parents' shelves as a man has of finding a new blade of grass when he walks into a field. So yes, he read voraciously from an early age, and he and his brother began writing stories. They were neither of them very sporty, so they immersed themselves in books and in the world of imagination. And yes, Lewis as a young boy wrote wrote a series of stories, which are now published actually, his juvenilia, under the title Stories from Box N, B-O-X-E-N.
And they featured featured lots of dressed animals, which might make you think of the Narnia Chronicles, but Lewis says there was nothing very Romantic about these stories. There was nothing fantastic. It was really just a way of satisfying what he thought was the proper taste in in politics that his father was modelling for them. And so they were almost astonishingly prosaic, Lewis says. No taste of fairyland in these stories. And that I think is a difference. So there's a clear indication in his early years that Lewis is. already being very inventive and imaginative, but the quality of his imaginings definitely changes as he grows older.
Absolutely. I guess things develop as you get older, your your views change and then their work changes with it. You mentioned before that Lewis suffered a tragedy when his mother died well he was very young.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who was C.S. Lewis beyond the Narnia books?
0:06–0:50
2
How did Lewis’s Irish upbringing and early family tragedies shape his character?
0:50–1:52
3
What impact did the harsh boarding‑school experience have on his worldview?
1:52–6:53
4
How did Lewis’s service in the First World War influence his later writing?
6:53–11:26
5
What led to Lewis’s conversion back to Christianity after the war?
11:26–14:21
6
How did the friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien inspire the creation of Narnia?
14:21–18:04
7
What were the personal and literary consequences of his marriage to Joy Davidman?
18:04–23:10
8
How has C.S. Lewis’s reputation evolved since his death in 1963?
23:10–36:45