C. S. Lewis – A Life Read online

  PRAISE FOR C. S. LEWIS—A LIFE

  Alister McGrath sheds new light on the life of the incomparable C. S. Lewis. This is an important book.

  ERIC METAXAS

  New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

  Alister McGrath’s new biography of C. S. Lewis is excellent. It’s filled with information based on extensive scholarship but is nonetheless extremely readable. It not only devotes great attention to the formation and character of Lewis the man, it offers incisive and balanced analyses of all his main literary works. I was one of those newly converted American evangelicals who hungrily devoured Lewis’s works in the late 1960s and early ’70s. His impact on me was profound and lasting, and Dr. McGrath clearly explains why so many believers and Christian leaders today can say the same thing.

  TIMOTHY KELLER

  Bestselling author of The Reason for God and senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church

  Many of us thought we knew most of what there was to know about C. S. Lewis. Alister McGrath’s new biography makes use of archives and other material that clarify, deepen, and further explain the many sides of one of Christianity’s most remarkable apologists. This is a penetrating and illuminating study.

  N. T. WRIGHT

  Bestselling author of Simply Christian

  Alister McGrath has written a meticulously researched, insightful, fair-minded, and honest account of a fascinating man’s life. His book is especially distinctive in its placing of Lewis in his vocational and social contexts, but it also provides a compelling account of the development of Lewis’s Christian mind. This will be an indispensable resource for fans and scholars of Lewis.

  ALAN JACOBS

  Bestselling author of The Narnian

  For people who might wonder if we need another biography of C. S. Lewis, McGrath’s crisp, insightful, and at times quite original portrait of the celebrated Oxford Christian will change their minds.

  LYLE W. DORSETT

  Editor of The Essential C. S. Lewis

  A welcome addition to the biographical literature on C. S. Lewis, which includes several valuable new perspectives. McGrath’s book will gain a permanent position in Lewis scholarship for his brilliant and, to my mind, undeniable re-dating of Lewis’s conversion to Theism. How we all missed this for so long is astonishing!

  MICHAEL WARD

  Author of Planet Narnia

  Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  The Hobbit is a trademark of the Saul Zaentz Company dba Tolkien Enterprises.

  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a trademark of C. S. Lewis (Pte) Ltd.

  The Lord of the Rings is a trademark of the Saul Zaentz Company dba Tolkien Enterprises.

  Narnia is a trademark of C. S. Lewis (Pte) Ltd.

  C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet

  Copyright © 2013 by Alister McGrath. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph copyright © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

  Photograph of Lewis grave marker courtesy of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Oxford. Used with permission.

  Designed by Erik M. Peterson

  Edited by Mark Norton and Jonathan Schindler

  Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

  ISBN 978-1-4143-8251-7 (Apple); ISBN 978-1-4143-8252-4 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-8253-1 (Kindle)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McGrath, Alister, date.

  C. S. Lewis—a life : eccentric genius, reluctant prophet / Alister McGrath.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-4143-3935-1 (hc)

  1. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963. 2. Authors, English—20th century—Biography. I. Title.

  PR6023.E926Z7946 2013

  823'.912—dc23

  [B] 2012033140

  Build: 2013-01-28 13:30:32

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Part One: Prelude Chapter 1: The Soft Hills of Down: An Irish Childhood

  Chapter 2: The Ugly Country of England: Schooldays

  Chapter 3: The Vasty Fields of France: War

  Part Two: Oxford Chapter 4: Deceptions and Discoveries: The Making of an Oxford Don

  Chapter 5: Fellowship, Family, and Friendship: The Early Years at Magdalen College

  Chapter 6: The Most Reluctant Convert: The Making of a Mere Christian

  Chapter 7: A Man of Letters: Literary Scholarship and Criticism

  Chapter 8: National Acclaim: The Wartime Apologist

  Chapter 9: International Fame: The Mere Christian

  Chapter 10: A Prophet without Honour?: Postwar Tensions and Problems

  Part Three: Narnia Chapter 11: Rearranging Reality: The Creation of Narnia

  Chapter 12: Narnia: Exploring an Imaginative World

  Part Four: Cambridge Chapter 13: The Move to Cambridge: Magdalene College

  Chapter 14: Bereavement, Illness, and Death: The Final Years

  Part Five: Afterlife Chapter 15: The Lewis Phenomenon

  Timeline

  Acknowledgements

  Works Consulted

  Notes

  Index

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1.1 Royal Avenue, Belfast, in 1897

  1.2 Map of C. S. Lewis’s Ireland

  1.3 The Lewis family at Little Lea in 1905

  1.4 Pension le Petit Vallon, Berneval-le-Grand, around 1905

  1.5 C. S. Lewis and Warnie with their bicycles in August 1908

  2.1 William Thompson Kirkpatrick (1848–1921) in 1920

  2.2 C. S. Lewis and Arthur Greeves in 1910

  2.3 Lord Kitchener: “Your country needs you!”

  2.4 Station Road, Great Bookham, in 1924

  3.1 The undergraduates of University College, Trinity Term 1917

  3.2 Keble College, Oxford, in 1907

  3.3 C. S. Lewis and Paddy Moore in Oxford during the summer of 1917

  4.1 Radcliffe Quadrangle, University College, in 1917

  4.2 The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, in 1922

  4.3 Cornmarket Street, Oxford, in 1922

  4.4 “The Family”: C. S. Lewis, Maureen, and Mrs. Moore in 1927

  4.5 Magdalen College, Oxford, during the winter of 1910

  5.1 The president and fellows of Magdalen College, July 1928

  5.2 The New Building, Magdalen College, around 1925

  5.3 The last known photograph of Albert Lewis, 1928

  5.4 C. S. Lewis, Mrs. Moore, and Warnie at The Kilns in 1930

  5.5 J. R. R. Tolkien in his rooms at Merton College in the 1970s

  6.1 The interior of Magdalen College chapel, around 1927

  6.2 Addison’s Walk, Magdalen College, in 1937

  6.3 Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Oxford, in 1901

  7.1 The Examination Schools, Oxford University, in 1892

  7.2 A group of Inklings at The Trout, Godstow, near Oxford

  7.3 Duke Humfrey’s Library, Oxford, in 1902

  8.1 The Oxford Home Guard on parade in 1940

  8.2 The novelist and poet Charles Williams (1886–1945)

  8.3 Broadcasting House, London, around 1950

  10.1 C. S. Lewis and his brother, Warnie, on holiday in Ireland, 1949

  11.1 Mr. Tumnus carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood
/>   11.2 The four children discover the mysterious wardrobe

  12.1 Pauline Baynes’s “Map of Narnia”

  13.1 Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1955

  13.2 Joy Davidman Lewis in 1960

  13.3 Peter Bide in November 1960

  14.1 The Acland Nursing Home, Oxford, in 1900

  14.2 C. S. Lewis’s letter nominating J. R. R. Tolkien for the 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature

  14.3 The inscription on C. S. Lewis’s gravestone

  15.1 C. S. Lewis at home at The Kilns in 1960

  PREFACE

  Who is C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)? For many, probably most, Lewis is the creator of the fabulous world of Narnia, the author of some of the best-known and most discussed children’s books of the twentieth century, which continue to attract enthusiastic readers and sell in the millions. Fifty years after his death, Lewis remains one of the most influential popular writers of our age. Alongside his equally famous Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973), author of The Lord of the Rings, Lewis is widely seen as a literary and cultural landmark. The worlds of literature and cinema have been deeply shaped by both of these Oxford authors. Yet without Lewis, The Lord of the Rings might never have been written. Lewis may have created his own bestsellers, but he was also midwife to Tolkien’s masterpiece, even proposing Tolkien for the 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature on the basis of this epic work. For these reasons alone, the story of C. S. Lewis is worth telling.

  But there is far more to C. S. Lewis than this. As Lewis’s long-term friend Owen Barfield (1898–1997) once remarked, there were really three C. S. Lewises. Alongside Lewis the author of bestselling novels, there is a second, less well-known persona: Lewis the Christian writer and apologist, concerned to communicate and share his rich vision of the intellectual and imaginative power of the Christian faith—a faith he discovered in the middle of his life and found rationally and spiritually compelling. Much to the annoyance of some, his Mere Christianity is now often cited as the most influential religious work of the twentieth century.

  Perhaps on account of his very public commitment to Christianity, Lewis remains a controversial figure, who elicits affection and admiration from some of those who share his delight in the Christian faith, and ridicule and contempt from some of those who do not. Yet whether one thinks Christianity is good or bad, it is clearly important—and Lewis is perhaps the most credible and influential popular representative of the “mere Christianity” that he himself championed.

  Yet there is a third aspect to Lewis, perhaps the least familiar to most of his admirers and critics: the distinguished Oxford don and literary critic who packed lecture theatres with his unscripted reflections on English literature, and who went on to become the first occupant of the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge. Few might now read his Preface to “Paradise Lost” (1942); in its day, however, it set a new standard through its clarity and insight.

  Lewis’s professional calling was to the “groves of Academe.” His election as a fellow of the British Academy in July 1955 was a public demonstration of his high scholarly repute. Yet some in the academic world regarded his commercial and popular success as being inconsistent with any claim on his part to be a serious scholar. From 1942 onwards, Lewis struggled to maintain his academic credibility in the light of his more popular works, above all his lighthearted musings on the diabolical world of Screwtape.

  So how do these three Lewises relate to each other? Are they separate compartments of his life, or are they somehow interconnected? And how did they each develop? This book aims to tell the story of the shaping and expressing of Lewis’s mind, focussing on his writings. It is not concerned with documenting every aspect of Lewis’s life, but with exploring the complex and fascinating connections between Lewis’s external and internal worlds. This biography is thus organised around the real and imaginary worlds that Lewis inhabited—primarily Oxford, Cambridge, and Narnia. How does the development of his ideas and his imagination map onto the physical worlds he inhabited? Who helped him craft his intellectual and imaginative vision of reality?

  In our discussion, we shall consider Lewis’s rise to fame, and some of the factors that lay behind this. Yet it is one thing for Lewis to have become famous; it is another for him to remain so fifty years after his death. Many commentators back in the 1960s believed that Lewis’s fame was transitory. His inevitable decline into obscurity, many then believed, was just a matter of time—a decade at most. It is for this reason that the final chapter of this work tries to explain, not simply why Lewis became such a figure of authority and influence, but why he remains so today.

  Some of the more important early biographies were written by those who knew Lewis personally. These continue to be invaluable as descriptions of what Lewis was like as a human being, as well as offering some important judgements concerning his character. However, the vast scholarly endeavours of the last two decades have clarified questions of historical importance (such as Lewis’s role in the Great War), explored aspects of Lewis’s intellectual development, and provided critical readings of his major works. This biography tries to weave these strands together, presenting an understanding of Lewis firmly grounded in earlier studies, yet able to go beyond them.

  Any attempt to deal with Lewis’s rise to prominence has to acknowledge his misgivings about assuming a public role. Lewis was indeed a prophet to his own day and age, and beyond; yet it must be said that he was a reluctant prophet. Even his own conversion seemed to take place against his better judgement; and having been converted to Christianity, Lewis spoke out on its themes largely because of the silence or unintelligibility of those he believed were better placed than he was to engage religious and theological questions publicly.

  Lewis also comes across as something of an eccentric, in the proper sense of that term—someone who departs from recognised, conventional, or established norms or patterns, or who is displaced from the centre of things. His curious relationship with Mrs. Moore, to be discussed in some detail in this work, placed him well outside the British social norms of the 1920s. Many of Lewis’s academic colleagues at Oxford came to regard him as an outsider from about 1940, both on account of his openly Christian views and his unscholarly habit of writing popular works of fiction and apologetics. Lewis famously described his distance from the prevailing academic trends of his day when he referred to himself as a “dinosaur” in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge University in 1954.

  This sense of distance from the centre is also evident in Lewis’s religious life. Although Lewis became a highly influential voice within British Christianity, he operated from its margins rather than its centre, and had no time for the cultivation of relationships with leading figures of the religious establishment. It was perhaps this trait that endeared him to some in the media, anxious to find an authentic religious voice outside the power structures of the mainstream churches.

  This biography sets out, not to praise Lewis or condemn him, but to understand him—above all, his ideas, and how these found expression in his writings. This task has been made easier by the publication of virtually all that is known to remain of Lewis’s writings, as well as a significant body of critical scholarly literature dealing with his works and ideas.

  The vast amount of biographical and scholarly material now available concerning Lewis and his circle threatens to overwhelm the reader with fine detail. Those trying to make sense of Lewis find themselves bombarded with what the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) called “a meteoric shower of facts,” raining from the sky.1 How, she asked, might these be combined to disclose meaning, rather than remaining a mere accumulation of information? This biography adds to what is known about Lewis’s life, while also trying to make sense of it. How are these facts to be woven together, so that they may disclose a pattern? This biography of Lewis is not another rehearsal of the vast army of facts and figures concerning his life, but an attempt to identify its deepe
r themes and concerns, and assess its significance. This is not a work of synopsis, but of analysis.

  The publication of the collected letters of C. S. Lewis, carefully annotated and cross-referenced by Walter Hooper during the period 2000–2006, is of landmark importance for Lewis studies. These letters, taking up some 3,500 pages of text, offer insights into Lewis that were simply not available to an earlier generation of Lewis biographers. Perhaps most important, they provide a continuous narrative backbone for an account of Lewis’s life. For this reason, these letters are cited more than any other source throughout this biography. As will become clear, a close reading of these letters forces review and possibly revision of some widely accepted dates in Lewis’s life.

  This is a critical biography, which examines the evidence for existing assumptions and approaches, and corrects them where necessary. In most cases, this can be done simply and subtly, and I have seen no reason to draw attention to those corrections. On the other hand, it is only fair to tell readers from the outset that this wearying yet necessary process of checking everything against documentary evidence has led me to one conclusion in particular that pits me, not simply against every Lewis scholar I know, but against Lewis himself. I refer to the date of his “conversion” or recovery of belief in God, which Lewis himself, in his book Surprised by Joy (1955), locates in “Trinity Term 1929” (that is, at some point between 28 April and 22 June 1929).2

  This date is faithfully repeated in every major study of Lewis to have appeared recently. Yet my close reading of the documentary material points unequivocally to a later date, possibly as early as March 1930, but more likely in the Trinity Term of that year. On this point, I stand entirely alone in Lewis scholarship, and the reader has a right to know that I am completely isolated on this question.

  From what has been said already, it will be clear that there is no need to justify a new biography of Lewis to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1963. Yet perhaps there is a need to offer a small defence of myself as his biographer. Unlike his earlier biographers—such as his longtime friends George Sayer (1914–2005) and Roger Lancelyn Green (1918–1987)—I never knew Lewis personally. He was someone I discovered through his writings in my early twenties, a decade after his death, and who, over a period of twenty years, gradually came to win my respect and admiration, though mingled with continuing curiosity and abiding concerns. I have no illuminating memories, no privileged disclosures, and no private documents on which to draw. Every resource used in this biography is either already in the public domain or available to public scrutiny and inspection.