1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,560 An enormous crowd gathers in Westminster Abbey to mark 2 00:00:04,560 --> 00:00:08,280 the addition of a new name to those of the dramatists and scribes 3 00:00:08,280 --> 00:00:10,280 remembered in Poets' Corner. 4 00:00:10,280 --> 00:00:14,560 Among our great national poets, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, 5 00:00:14,560 --> 00:00:19,560 they are commemorating a man who is very well known for his prose, 6 00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:22,440 not so well known for writing verse. 7 00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:26,720 CS Lewis wasn't a great poet, 8 00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:30,400 but his prose guarantees him immortality. 9 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:33,960 People think of CS Lewis as the author of the Chronicles Of Narnia. 10 00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:36,920 But the Narnia tales were only the smallest fraction 11 00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:40,000 of a vast literary output. 12 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:43,400 Lewis was an atheist who became a zealous Christian 13 00:00:43,400 --> 00:00:48,280 who dedicated himself a rational basis for the faith. 14 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:51,080 I'd like to deal with the difficulty some people find 15 00:00:51,080 --> 00:00:53,640 about the whole idea of prayer. 16 00:00:53,640 --> 00:00:56,760 His theological books and broadcasts made him one of 17 00:00:56,760 --> 00:01:00,480 the made most influential Christian thinkers of the modern age. 18 00:01:00,480 --> 00:01:04,200 Almost certainly, God is not in Time. 19 00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:09,000 But theology wasn't his real job. 20 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:11,920 Lewis was, in fact, a scholar of medieval literature, 21 00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:13,040 and a great teacher. 22 00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:19,600 20 years ago, I wrote a biography of Clive Staples Lewis, 23 00:01:19,600 --> 00:01:21,960 and I suppose what fascinated me about him 24 00:01:21,960 --> 00:01:24,160 was he was a man of contrasts. 25 00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:26,800 He lived through the first part of the 20th century, 26 00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:29,040 but he hated the modern age. 27 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:33,400 He was a popular theologian, but he had great crisis of faith. 28 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:36,760 He was an extremely clever person, but a total incompetent. 29 00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:40,600 He failed the driving test 17 times. 30 00:01:40,600 --> 00:01:43,440 He ended his days as a university professor, 31 00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:46,440 but he was always a man who at key moments 32 00:01:46,440 --> 00:01:50,000 was ruled not by his head but by his heart. 33 00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:03,040 Lewis wrote over 60 books and essays for adults, 34 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:08,200 but is best remembered for the seven stories he wrote for children. 35 00:02:08,200 --> 00:02:10,520 It's said that CS Lewis' Narnia stories 36 00:02:10,520 --> 00:02:13,840 have sold over 100 million copies. 37 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:16,520 And for those many fans, he is a hero. 38 00:02:17,760 --> 00:02:20,800 The chief characters in the stories are children, 39 00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:24,840 and the formative influence his own childhood. 40 00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:28,120 But was that a happy childhood? Absolutely not. 41 00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:33,040 CS Lewis was born in 1898. 42 00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:38,000 His parents were surprisingly liberal for their time. 43 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:40,680 He grew up surrounded by books on all subjects, 44 00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:42,760 with no limit to what he could read. 45 00:02:45,160 --> 00:02:47,920 Lewis would make his life and his fame 46 00:02:47,920 --> 00:02:49,960 in the most English of surroundings. 47 00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:55,200 But he was in fact an Ulsterman, from Belfast. 48 00:02:57,200 --> 00:03:01,760 This is the Little Lea, the house which Albert Lewis, 49 00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:05,000 a prosperous Belfast solicitor, had built for his family. 50 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:06,360 And it's the scene 51 00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:10,920 of all CS Lewis' earliest childhood imaginative experiences. 52 00:03:15,440 --> 00:03:17,920 At the end of an upstairs corridor, 53 00:03:17,920 --> 00:03:20,160 in what they called "the little end room," 54 00:03:20,160 --> 00:03:23,360 Clive, known as Jack, and his brother Warren, 55 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:26,600 known as Warnie, created a fantasy world. 56 00:03:28,440 --> 00:03:32,000 In his autobiography, "Surprised By Joy," 57 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,360 Jack Lewis recalls a moss and twig diorama forest 58 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:39,960 that Warnie made for him on a biscuit tin lid. 59 00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:44,160 The first sight of it awakened an obsession with the natural world, 60 00:03:44,160 --> 00:03:47,120 but a hyperreal version of it. 61 00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:50,360 Magical, surreal, mythic. 62 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:53,920 Something more pungent than the real thing. 63 00:03:53,920 --> 00:03:58,320 He called it "Paradise," the first beauty he ever knew. 64 00:04:00,120 --> 00:04:03,240 This was the beginning of Lewis' sense of longing, 65 00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:07,800 an elation felt and immediately lost, like fragrance. 66 00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:11,880 He described it as "An unsatisfied desire 67 00:04:11,880 --> 00:04:15,720 "that is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." 68 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:19,560 In German, they call it Sehnsucht. 69 00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:24,840 It was a rapture he experienced when reading the poet Longfellow, 70 00:04:24,840 --> 00:04:27,920 on seeing a flowering bush in the garden, 71 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:29,760 and, most significantly, 72 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:32,880 when reading of the bushy-tailed superhero 73 00:04:32,880 --> 00:04:35,480 Squirrel Nutkin. 74 00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:47,120 Like most children of his generation, 75 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:50,440 Lewis had read stories about talking animals. 76 00:04:50,440 --> 00:04:52,520 The mad March Hare in Lewis Carroll, 77 00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:55,960 or the clothed creatures in Beatrix Potter. 78 00:04:55,960 --> 00:05:00,520 So, it's hardly surprising when he started to invent his own stories 79 00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:02,920 as a child, his invented world, Boxen, 80 00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:05,040 was a place full of talking animals. 81 00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:17,920 Jack and Warnie were happy in their imaginative worlds, 82 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:20,120 but their joy was short-lived. 83 00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:25,880 In 1908, when Jack was only nine, their mother Flora died from cancer. 84 00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:29,800 Poor little Jack, tormented by toothache, 85 00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:32,480 called out for his mother in the dark, and she didn't come. 86 00:05:32,480 --> 00:05:35,120 And he couldn't understand why she didn't come. 87 00:05:35,120 --> 00:05:40,880 And he called again, and his father came to him in tears 88 00:05:40,880 --> 00:05:42,880 and broke the news. 89 00:05:42,880 --> 00:05:44,800 It was always devastating to Lewis 90 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:48,480 that he'd never had the chance to say goodbye to his mother. 91 00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:53,240 Before the death there was the happy, golden childhood 92 00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:54,800 in Northern Ireland. 93 00:05:54,800 --> 00:05:57,960 After it, there was the dark. 94 00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:04,480 He later wrote, "It was all sea and islands now. 95 00:06:04,480 --> 00:06:09,960 "The great continent had sunk, like Atlantis." 96 00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:25,360 The most recent biographer of CS Lewis is Alister McGrath. 97 00:06:25,360 --> 00:06:28,800 He vividly captures the child who would become the great man. 98 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:31,720 The death of Flora Lewis 99 00:06:31,720 --> 00:06:34,920 really brought that idyllic period to an end. 100 00:06:34,920 --> 00:06:38,760 It meant that Lewis had lost the lodestar of his life, I think. 101 00:06:38,760 --> 00:06:43,320 It's very clear that Lewis saw his mother as a figure of stability. 102 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:46,080 His father's decision to send Lewis away to boarding school 103 00:06:46,080 --> 00:06:49,320 in England immediately after his mother's death - I mean, 104 00:06:49,320 --> 00:06:52,200 it may have been well-intentioned, but it was a mistake. 105 00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:55,680 And, I think, led to alienation between Lewis and his father, 106 00:06:55,680 --> 00:06:59,120 but also, I think, led Lewis to really feel lonely, 107 00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:01,160 isolated and wondering, "Why on earth?" 108 00:07:01,160 --> 00:07:05,560 Things were all about, how could he reconnect with a lost family life? 109 00:07:08,080 --> 00:07:11,880 Being sent to school in England so soon after Flora's death 110 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:15,360 was something the nine-year-old Lewis felt acutely. 111 00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:18,880 He never forgot the horrible experience of sitting on the boat 112 00:07:18,880 --> 00:07:23,840 going over to England for the first time and hearing the English voices. 113 00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:25,800 They made him feel an alien. 114 00:07:27,120 --> 00:07:30,280 And although he spent all his grown-up life in England, 115 00:07:30,280 --> 00:07:34,240 he never quite lost that sense, that sense of alienation 116 00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:37,920 which went, as his strong imagination developed, 117 00:07:37,920 --> 00:07:41,040 with this romantic feeling of yearning and longing 118 00:07:41,040 --> 00:07:43,280 for something that was forever lost. 119 00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:51,360 MUSIC: "Siegfried's Funeral March" by Richard Wagner 120 00:07:57,840 --> 00:08:00,880 Lewis hated his English schools. 121 00:08:00,880 --> 00:08:05,640 He later described his experiences as worse than life in the trenches. 122 00:08:06,960 --> 00:08:11,880 In his utter misery, he retreated into a world of fantasy. 123 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:15,280 And it was at his English boarding school in 1911 124 00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:20,480 that he made two key discoveries in his emotional and aesthetic journey. 125 00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:26,480 The sight of the mythic creatures in Arthur Rackham's illustration 126 00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:31,080 for Wagner's Ring Cycle stirred romantic urges in Lewis. 127 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:35,080 And when hearing Wagner's music 128 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:38,840 of Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods itself, 129 00:08:38,840 --> 00:08:43,960 he was transported to what he describes as "pure Northernness," 130 00:08:43,960 --> 00:08:46,440 a vision of huge, clear spaces 131 00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:49,560 hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight. 132 00:08:52,320 --> 00:08:54,080 Lewis was a sensitive youth, 133 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:57,320 appalled by the brutality of public school. 134 00:08:57,320 --> 00:09:01,480 He loathed athleticism, he couldn't catch a ball or wield a bat. 135 00:09:01,480 --> 00:09:04,120 He used to say his whole life would have been different 136 00:09:04,120 --> 00:09:05,680 if he'd had different thumbs. 137 00:09:05,680 --> 00:09:08,280 He had these weird thumbs he'd inherited from his father, 138 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:10,440 that there was no joint in his thumb. 139 00:09:10,440 --> 00:09:13,080 He could wield a pen all right, and always used a dip pen. 140 00:09:14,520 --> 00:09:18,440 Luckily for him, his education was about to pass into the hands 141 00:09:18,440 --> 00:09:22,320 of a man who cared not one jot about sporting prowess. 142 00:09:25,840 --> 00:09:30,520 William Kirkpatrick was a patrician classicist from Northern Ireland 143 00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:32,840 who'd taught Lewis' father. 144 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:35,840 On realising Jack's unhappiness at boarding school, 145 00:09:35,840 --> 00:09:39,640 Albert Lewis decided to send his son to Kirkpatrick. 146 00:09:39,640 --> 00:09:41,760 And it was Kirkpatrick who finished - 147 00:09:41,760 --> 00:09:45,240 or, perhaps, started - Jack Lewis' education at his home 148 00:09:45,240 --> 00:09:48,320 in the leafy Surrey village of Great Bookham. 149 00:09:48,320 --> 00:09:51,080 Kirkpatrick was waiting to meet the train, 150 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:53,040 and the shy Lewis happened to remark 151 00:09:53,040 --> 00:09:56,640 that he was surprised to find the countryside of Surrey so wild. 152 00:09:56,640 --> 00:09:59,440 "Stop!" Said Kirkpatrick. "What do you mean by wild? 153 00:09:59,440 --> 00:10:01,240 "And why should you have a presupposition 154 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:05,000 "about the nature of a countryside you've never seen in your life?" 155 00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:13,200 Over three years, Kirkpatrick re-engineered Lewis intellectually, 156 00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:17,480 making him a hardened dialectician, logician and orator. 157 00:10:18,600 --> 00:10:22,280 By 18 years old, Lewis read the classics in the original languages 158 00:10:22,280 --> 00:10:24,680 and could retain them all. 159 00:10:24,680 --> 00:10:27,440 And there was another transformation. 160 00:10:27,440 --> 00:10:32,560 The Ulster Protestant boy had turned into an Ulster Protestant atheist. 161 00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:34,680 Like Kirkpatrick himself. 162 00:10:34,680 --> 00:10:38,400 At 17 years old, Lewis no longer believed in heaven. 163 00:10:38,400 --> 00:10:42,040 But he was about to step into an earthly hell. 164 00:10:45,040 --> 00:10:47,120 Europe was in the throes of war. 165 00:10:49,040 --> 00:10:54,040 And although Lewis won a place at Oxford to read classics in 1917, 166 00:10:54,040 --> 00:10:58,280 he almost immediately volunteered for active service... 167 00:10:58,280 --> 00:11:00,000 and was sent here to Keble College, 168 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:03,560 which had been requisitioned for officer training. 169 00:11:04,880 --> 00:11:08,640 The cadets were arranged alphabetically in the dormitory, 170 00:11:08,640 --> 00:11:12,840 and in the next-door bed was Paddy Moore, a young Irish boy, 171 00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:16,240 very charming, with whom Lewis formed a friendship. 172 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,560 With their imminent departure to the front line, 173 00:11:20,560 --> 00:11:22,640 Jack and Paddy made a pact. 174 00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:24,840 If one of them didn't come back, 175 00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:27,600 they'd care for the parents of the other. 176 00:11:27,600 --> 00:11:33,120 Jack's father, Albert Lewis, or Paddy's mother, Janie Moore. 177 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:37,880 Paddy was sent to France in October 1917, 178 00:11:37,880 --> 00:11:41,880 and Jack arrived a month later on his 19th birthday. 179 00:11:43,280 --> 00:11:45,040 In writing about CS Lewis, 180 00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:47,440 I was interested in the psychological turning points 181 00:11:47,440 --> 00:11:51,600 that made him, and perplexed that the First World War 182 00:11:51,600 --> 00:11:54,080 didn't seem to have been one of them. 183 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:57,160 He experienced the horror of trench warfare, 184 00:11:57,160 --> 00:12:00,360 took prisoner a whole German platoon, and was wounded by shrapnel 185 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:03,560 that killed comrades standing next to him. 186 00:12:03,560 --> 00:12:06,560 Fellow-combatants like Sassoon, Graves 187 00:12:06,560 --> 00:12:09,800 and Rupert Brooke were inspired to write great poetry. 188 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:12,800 Lewis also wrote verse in the trenches, 189 00:12:12,800 --> 00:12:15,840 but the collection, Spirits In Bondage, 190 00:12:15,840 --> 00:12:18,000 was unremarkable. 191 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:21,240 He seems not to have been much moved by the horror of it all. 192 00:12:21,240 --> 00:12:24,840 He described the experience as "unimportant." 193 00:12:24,840 --> 00:12:26,880 Was he in denial? 194 00:12:26,880 --> 00:12:31,680 In Surprised By Joy, Lewis uses a very interesting phrase, 195 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:34,440 "a treaty with reality." 196 00:12:34,440 --> 00:12:38,080 What he means by that is, in effect, there is a firewall 197 00:12:38,080 --> 00:12:39,440 he has constructed, 198 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:43,400 which keeps unsettling thoughts firmly on its other side. 199 00:12:43,400 --> 00:12:46,160 My own feeling is that the reason he does this 200 00:12:46,160 --> 00:12:48,160 is he found it so traumatic 201 00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:51,680 that he even finds remembering it very, very difficult. 202 00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:00,440 The War would, in fact, be a turning point for Jack Lewis. 203 00:13:00,440 --> 00:13:02,880 Not creatively, but emotionally. 204 00:13:02,880 --> 00:13:04,880 Through his friendship with Paddy Moore, 205 00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:07,880 he met the woman with whom he'd spend most of his life. 206 00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:15,000 On the 24th of March 1918, Paddy was indeed killed in action. 207 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:17,880 And Jack kept his part of the bargain, 208 00:13:17,880 --> 00:13:20,320 to look after Paddy's mother. 209 00:13:23,800 --> 00:13:27,800 With peace came a return to University College, Oxford. 210 00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:29,840 He had rooms in college, 211 00:13:29,840 --> 00:13:33,160 but he was living in the suburbs with Mrs Moore. 212 00:13:33,160 --> 00:13:35,880 He was 20, she was 46. 213 00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:43,000 Today, the CS Lewis industry includes tourism. 214 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:45,000 Guide Peter Cousin is familiar 215 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:48,800 with the succession of cheap lodging houses around Oxford 216 00:13:48,800 --> 00:13:54,000 where Lewis and Mrs Moore, or Minto, as he called her, 217 00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:56,280 lived between 1919 and 1930. 218 00:13:56,280 --> 00:13:59,600 We're going to view the first accommodation 219 00:13:59,600 --> 00:14:03,680 where Mrs Moore and Lewis had rooms. 220 00:14:03,680 --> 00:14:05,440 Oh, yes, look - Anstey Villa. 221 00:14:05,440 --> 00:14:06,800 It's quite a modest house. 222 00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:10,360 Yes, it would be two or three-bedroom. 223 00:14:10,360 --> 00:14:13,280 It was much more modest than the house that Lewis was brought up in. 224 00:14:13,280 --> 00:14:14,360 Oh, yes. 225 00:14:14,360 --> 00:14:16,000 They still had old gaslights, 226 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:18,560 and it definitely wouldn't have had any central heating. 227 00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:20,000 No! 228 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:22,720 It's very touching to think of them there, isn't it, Peter? 229 00:14:22,720 --> 00:14:24,960 It is, actually. Yes. 230 00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,200 All the letters that Lewis wrote to his father Albert 231 00:14:28,200 --> 00:14:30,720 have always got a college address. Yep. 232 00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:34,600 He's trying to hide this relationship with Mrs Moore. 233 00:14:36,160 --> 00:14:39,560 Lewis kept secret his relationship with Minto, 234 00:14:39,560 --> 00:14:41,120 not just because he was adept 235 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:44,440 at compartmentalising emotional matters - 236 00:14:44,440 --> 00:14:47,760 there were practical reasons for the subterfuge. 237 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:49,920 As an undergraduate at Oxford, 238 00:14:49,920 --> 00:14:52,440 he was meant to be living in his college. 239 00:14:54,240 --> 00:14:59,520 It's hard for us to imagine just how strict Oxford was in those days. 240 00:14:59,520 --> 00:15:02,040 I had an old friend who was a few years younger than Lewis, 241 00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:05,640 who was sacked in the 1920s from the University 242 00:15:05,640 --> 00:15:08,760 for spending one night with a woman in Reading. 243 00:15:08,760 --> 00:15:11,560 Lewis was living with Mrs Moore, 244 00:15:11,560 --> 00:15:16,200 and he had to keep the relationship secret, too, from his father. 245 00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:19,280 That his father was financing not just one student 246 00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:21,840 but a family of three. 247 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:27,200 Not only was the 20-year-old Lewis caring for Minto, 248 00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:31,360 but also for her daughter Maureen. He called Minto "Mother," 249 00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:34,680 and became a de facto stepfather to Maureen, 250 00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:37,560 who was only eight years his junior. 251 00:15:37,560 --> 00:15:40,080 There was clearly some sort of relationship 252 00:15:40,080 --> 00:15:41,760 between Lewis and Mrs Moore 253 00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:46,360 which mingled maternal affection and romantic love. 254 00:15:46,360 --> 00:15:48,800 And I don't think we really understand that relationship 255 00:15:48,800 --> 00:15:50,040 completely. 256 00:15:50,040 --> 00:15:53,960 Mrs Moore, in effect, brought Lewis the stability, the affection, 257 00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:57,920 the family context, that Lewis felt he was missing, 258 00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:00,320 partly through the death of his mother, 259 00:16:00,320 --> 00:16:04,080 but also through the increasing alienation that was building up 260 00:16:04,080 --> 00:16:06,440 between himself and his father. 261 00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:10,040 And living with a woman was a very dangerous thing to do. Oh, yes. 262 00:16:10,040 --> 00:16:14,360 What Lewis did, in effect, was present Mrs Moore as his landlady. 263 00:16:14,360 --> 00:16:17,200 "The reason why I'm spending time in her house 264 00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:19,760 "is that I'm renting a room from her." 265 00:16:19,760 --> 00:16:23,920 And then, as things got more complex, he presented Mrs Moore as his mother. 266 00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:32,320 Kirkpatrick's training paid off, and by 1923, 267 00:16:32,320 --> 00:16:34,840 Lewis had a first in classics to his name, 268 00:16:34,840 --> 00:16:38,440 with another first in English literature for good measure. 269 00:16:38,440 --> 00:16:41,840 He was increasingly steeping himself in his childhood love 270 00:16:41,840 --> 00:16:45,400 of Norse mythology and everything medieval. 271 00:16:46,680 --> 00:16:50,320 And it was with the fellow-medievalist JRR Tolkien 272 00:16:50,320 --> 00:16:54,160 that Lewis formed the fellowship called the Inklings. 273 00:16:54,160 --> 00:16:56,600 They were a handful of chaps who shared an interest 274 00:16:56,600 --> 00:16:59,920 in academic debate, erudition and alcohol. 275 00:16:59,920 --> 00:17:03,320 The Eagle and Child pub, always known as the Bird and Baby, 276 00:17:03,320 --> 00:17:05,720 was their Oxford drinking den. 277 00:17:05,720 --> 00:17:09,160 Lewis and cronies used to assemble here on Tuesdays 278 00:17:09,160 --> 00:17:10,720 between twelve and one. 279 00:17:10,720 --> 00:17:13,480 The general idea was to down as much beer as possible 280 00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:16,040 before they ate lunch in their colleges. 281 00:17:16,040 --> 00:17:17,920 Lewis had no small talk. 282 00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,520 One of the friends once arrived with his broken arm in a sling - 283 00:17:20,520 --> 00:17:22,920 Lewis didn't say, "Oh, poor you, you've broken your arm," 284 00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:23,960 it was straight into, 285 00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:26,280 "What does anybody here think of the Venerable Bede? 286 00:17:26,280 --> 00:17:28,360 "I've been rereading him, awfully good stuff." 287 00:17:28,360 --> 00:17:31,320 Dyson, the loudest member of the group, once said to me, 288 00:17:31,320 --> 00:17:34,720 "Anyone hearing us roar would assume we were talking bawdry. 289 00:17:34,720 --> 00:17:37,880 "In fact, we were discussing literature and theology." 290 00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:47,760 Lewis not only read the great poets, he's always dreamed of becoming one. 291 00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:51,680 He'd tried his hand at war poetry, unsuccessfully, 292 00:17:51,680 --> 00:17:53,600 and in 1926 he tried again, 293 00:17:53,600 --> 00:17:56,760 with what he hoped would be his great work. 294 00:17:56,760 --> 00:18:00,000 Dymer is a long, rambling narrative poem 295 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,720 about the citizen of a totalitarian state who wanders into a forest, 296 00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:07,680 and there he meets a beautiful woman. 297 00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:11,640 Only, it turns out she isn't a woman, she's really a monster. 298 00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:14,920 Dymer and the woman-monster have congress, 299 00:18:14,920 --> 00:18:17,040 and she gives birth to a son, 300 00:18:17,040 --> 00:18:21,680 and when he grows up, he fights Dymer and kills him. 301 00:18:21,680 --> 00:18:23,120 How do I know? 302 00:18:23,120 --> 00:18:26,600 Not, unfortunately, because I've ever got to the end. 303 00:18:26,600 --> 00:18:29,560 When I wrote my own book about Lewis, I found his prose, 304 00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:33,040 whatever subject he addressed, electrifyingly readable. 305 00:18:33,040 --> 00:18:36,080 But his poetry - oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. 306 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:39,200 And Dymer, I'm afraid, defeated me. 307 00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:43,080 Poor old Lewis, it took him ten years to write, 308 00:18:43,080 --> 00:18:46,440 and when it was published, it was such a flop. 309 00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:50,760 And ever afterwards he felt so resentful of the success 310 00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:53,120 and fame of his contemporary poets. 311 00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:01,080 Lewis was, however, a great success as a medieval scholar. 312 00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:03,840 His academic passion had paid off, 313 00:19:03,840 --> 00:19:07,680 and in 1925 he had been appointed a fellow of Magdalen College 314 00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:09,920 teaching English literature. 315 00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:16,200 The position came with a salary of £500 a year, rooms and dining. 316 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:19,240 CS Lewis spent hours of his life in this wonderful place, 317 00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:21,280 Duke Humfrey's Library, 318 00:19:21,280 --> 00:19:26,520 reading and reading and reading primary texts. 319 00:19:26,520 --> 00:19:28,840 The great texts of English literature, 320 00:19:28,840 --> 00:19:31,600 Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton. 321 00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:33,960 That was the stuff that interested him. 322 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:36,880 We tend to take it for granted that English literature 323 00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:39,720 is one of the main subjects studied in universities, 324 00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:43,920 but this was not the case when Lewis first got his job at Oxford. 325 00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:46,280 Indeed, there were many of the all-male colleges 326 00:19:46,280 --> 00:19:47,760 that didn't teach English at all. 327 00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:50,080 They thought of it as a girl's subject. 328 00:19:50,080 --> 00:19:53,760 Now, Tolkien and Lewis were very much of the opinion that 329 00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:56,120 English literature should have a sound, scholarly 330 00:19:56,120 --> 00:19:58,440 and, above all, historical base. 331 00:20:02,840 --> 00:20:05,960 Laura Ash, fellow of Worcester College Oxford, 332 00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:08,560 is a medievalist with an appreciation 333 00:20:08,560 --> 00:20:11,560 of the Irish man's contribution to the field. 334 00:20:11,560 --> 00:20:15,040 I think people forget how young English literature is as a subject. 335 00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:18,360 Lewis picked it up in a year after he'd done the real 336 00:20:18,360 --> 00:20:20,040 subject of classics. 337 00:20:20,040 --> 00:20:22,440 This was a time when people were staking out the ground. 338 00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:24,640 What's the point? Is this a technical subject 339 00:20:24,640 --> 00:20:28,400 or is it a subject about grand ideas of culture and the human? 340 00:20:28,400 --> 00:20:31,640 I think that is very clearly Lewis' approach. 341 00:20:31,640 --> 00:20:34,280 It's exhilarating reading his work. 342 00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:37,600 When you read something like The Allegory Of Love written in 1936, 343 00:20:37,600 --> 00:20:41,120 what he does is draw us into seeing the world in a new way. 344 00:20:41,120 --> 00:20:43,920 He says, "My own eyes are not enough for me. 345 00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:46,320 "I will see through the eyes of others. 346 00:20:46,320 --> 00:20:48,240 "And reality is not enough for me. 347 00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:50,400 "I will see what other men have invented." 348 00:20:52,200 --> 00:20:55,480 So what was it like having CS Lewis as your tutor? 349 00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:59,120 What was it like being taught by him in these rooms just above me here 350 00:20:59,120 --> 00:21:01,760 in New Buildings, Magdalen College? 351 00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:05,400 His nickname was Heavy Lewis and he could be a bit heavy. 352 00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:07,520 One of his pupils once said he couldn't see 353 00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:11,520 the point of Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum great epic poem. 354 00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:14,040 Lewis was so appalled, that he reached for his old 355 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:16,560 regimental sword which was lying in the corner of the room 356 00:21:16,560 --> 00:21:19,160 and said, "The sword must settle this." 357 00:21:23,240 --> 00:21:25,960 But it wasn't all confrontation. 358 00:21:25,960 --> 00:21:29,760 When he first encountered his tutor, actor to be, Robert Hardy, 359 00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:33,520 was in uniform as he was when we met. 360 00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:36,040 Robert, I notice you're wearing a Magdalen College tie. 361 00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:38,160 Yes, I put it on for the occasion. 362 00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:41,320 That was presumably where you met CS Lewis. Yes, absolutely. 363 00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:46,720 I vividly remember going through the Porters' Lodge and there on the lawn, 364 00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:54,000 coming towards me, I saw a man and I thought, "Oh, it's a gardener." 365 00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:57,600 But he had a tie on, so I thought, he's the head gardener. 366 00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:03,280 Then immediately behind me, as he passed, he said, "Are you Hardy?" 367 00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:05,600 I admitted and he said, 368 00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:07,640 "Oh, well, there now, it's 11 o'clock 369 00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:11,600 "and I'm going to be five minutes late. I'm Lewis, by the way." 370 00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:13,080 I couldn't believe it. 371 00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:16,120 I was absolutely staggered at his appearance. 372 00:22:16,120 --> 00:22:19,120 From reading all the stuff that my tutor at school had told me 373 00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:21,800 to read, I'd got a picture of Lewis. 374 00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:25,640 It was an El Greco Jesuit. 375 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:31,800 Thin, insistent, you know and rather frightening. 376 00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:36,560 Probably pale and intense. Pale and intense, absolutely. 377 00:22:36,560 --> 00:22:40,640 But my goodness me, there was this jolly farmer and I was absolutely 378 00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:44,800 in my element because I'm a country bumpkin, so I adored him ever after. 379 00:22:44,800 --> 00:22:48,120 Did he entertain his pupils? Oh, yes, he did. 380 00:22:48,120 --> 00:22:49,960 He gave wonderfully jolly 381 00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:54,040 and extraordinary parties with lots of booze. 382 00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:58,520 I can remember being hopelessly behind with an essay and I said, 383 00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:02,160 "Mr Lewis, I wonder, would it be possible, I'm supposed to be 384 00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:05,280 "reading my essay too tomorrow but I haven't quite finished it. 385 00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:07,920 "I wonder if I could come on Thursday." 386 00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:12,800 And he said, "No, no, no, don't bother about it for a second. 387 00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:16,400 "Come next Wednesday at the usual time 388 00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,880 "with an extra specially good essay. 389 00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:25,480 "The great thing about being at university, is to enjoy 390 00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:27,400 "yourself which I hope you are. 391 00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:29,320 "Besides, look at you in uniform, 392 00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:31,640 you'll be off soon and may well get killed. 393 00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:34,200 It's proper that you enjoy yourself." 394 00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:36,240 Which I thought was wonderful. 395 00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:42,800 Lewis was only a little older than his pupils 396 00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:46,840 but to those he took to, he seems to have been fatherly. 397 00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:50,520 His relations with his own father, however, were more difficult. 398 00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:57,440 In 1929, Albert Lewis was taken ill. 399 00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:00,640 His son was at an emotional crossroads. 400 00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:03,720 Lewis came home to Belfast to see his father. 401 00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:07,880 He and Albert had barely been in contact for a decade 402 00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:11,160 even though his father had supported him through his career. 403 00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:17,960 Lewis regarded his treatment of his father as the greatest 404 00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:20,280 sin of his life. 405 00:24:20,280 --> 00:24:22,240 But they were reconciled. 406 00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:25,240 When he realised Albert Lewis was dying, 407 00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:29,640 Jack came back to East Belfast and they had six golden weeks 408 00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,680 together in which the two men forged a friendship. 409 00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:38,600 Sadly, the Oxford term was about to begin and Lewis left. 410 00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,280 Four days later, after waving goodbye to his son, 411 00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:44,480 Albert Lewis died. 412 00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:49,800 Lewis returned here for his father's funeral 413 00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:55,560 and left this window, behind me, as a memorial to his parents. 414 00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:02,960 His father was, for Lewis, a symbol of a lost childhood. 415 00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:04,800 It wasn't so much his father he liked, 416 00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:07,280 it was much more what his father represented. 417 00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:10,240 One of the most moving parts of Lewis' 418 00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:14,520 correspondence, is his description of how after his father's death, 419 00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:20,000 he and his brother bury all their childhood toys in the ground, 420 00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,800 almost saying, let's get closure on this. 421 00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:25,080 This is the end of childhood. 422 00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:34,240 The Lewis boys drew a line and moved on, or did they? 423 00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:38,080 Jack Lewis had replaced his dead mother with a mother substitute. 424 00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:42,080 Albert's passing coincided with what might be 425 00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:46,040 seen as a process of finding a replacement father figure. 426 00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:52,560 Lewis had gone to the Western front, a devout atheist 427 00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,720 and returned with his convictions hardened. 428 00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,040 It was to be a slow process but at 30, he began to change. 429 00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:05,600 In the Trinity term of 1929, 430 00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:12,160 I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, 431 00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,160 perhaps that night the most dejected 432 00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:16,600 and reluctant convert in all England. 433 00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,920 Lewis started to attend his college chapel here. 434 00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,240 This is his stall as a fellow of the college. 435 00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,920 But, of course, at this stage, he still simply believed in God. 436 00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,840 He hadn't advanced to the position of believing in Jesus Christ. 437 00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:39,240 He had not yet completed his journey. 438 00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:49,040 Lewis had been a modern man, someone who believed in the modern 439 00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:53,240 materialist philosophy, that the world is all there is, 440 00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,960 that we live in a world of matter and matter alone. 441 00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:01,200 Yet he hated being modern. He felt as though he'd been imprisoned. 442 00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:06,440 This is how he describes it in his autobiography. 443 00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,720 The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, 444 00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,800 I was in fact offered what now appears a moment 445 00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:14,560 of prolifically choice. 446 00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:18,800 I became aware I was holding something at bay or shutting 447 00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:21,560 something out or if you liked, I was wearing some stiff 448 00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:26,960 clothing like corsets or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster. 449 00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:30,320 He felt he was being given the choice either to keep this 450 00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,320 suit of armour on or to discard it. 451 00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:39,720 He made the choice to discard the carapace of modern materialism. 452 00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:45,120 This rather weird experience, this liberation of Lewis' imagination 453 00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:51,400 occurred on the bus going home from Magdalen after a day's work 454 00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,800 to Headington and Mrs Moore. 455 00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:01,920 Lewis, the great medievalist and lover of ancient mythology, 456 00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:05,000 could see the attraction of Christianity 457 00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:07,480 but he could not yet believe it, 458 00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:11,600 until one very significant conversation 459 00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:13,920 with his close friend, JRR Tolkien. 460 00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:30,600 On the night of the 19th of September 1931, they were here 461 00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:36,040 with another friend, Hugo Dyson, on Addison's Walk in Magdalen College. 462 00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:41,200 As they walked, Dyson and Tolkien talked to Lewis about religion. 463 00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:43,240 They talked about myth. 464 00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,520 "How could it be," Lewis said, 465 00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:48,800 "that there are so many myths in the old world 466 00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:52,200 "in Egypt, Greece, the Nordic mythologies, 467 00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:56,400 "of a young man God dying and coming back to life?" 468 00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:01,160 Baldr, in the Nordic mythology, Adonis in Greece. 469 00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,800 How do you distinguish between that 470 00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:07,120 and Jesus Christ in the gospels who surely is a mythological 471 00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:12,360 figure who dies in order to rise and save us from our sins? 472 00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:13,960 Isn't that just a myth too? 473 00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:17,480 "Yes," said Tolkien. "Of course Christianity is a myth. 474 00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:21,040 "It just happens to be the one myth which is true." 475 00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:35,560 Tolkien, in particular, was able to show Lewis that Christianity 476 00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:40,080 was a story, a sense making story that grasped the imagination 477 00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:42,000 but this one was right. 478 00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,720 If this one was right, it positioned all other myths 479 00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:50,520 and Lewis suddenly realised this was the missing link, this enabled him to 480 00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:54,080 see how Christianity and literature connected up with each other. 481 00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:12,080 Lewis' central problem - 482 00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:17,200 how could the Christian myth be the only true one - was dealt with. 483 00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,880 All religions glimpse the wonder of God, 484 00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,480 but Christianity is the big picture. 485 00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:27,840 The moment of enlightenment happened not on the road to Damascus, 486 00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:30,920 but on the B489 to Dunstable. 487 00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:34,000 They were having a family outing to Whipsnade Zoo. 488 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,400 Maureen, Minto, Warnie and Jack. 489 00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,120 Lewis tells us that when they set out on that journey, 490 00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,320 he didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God. 491 00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:46,320 By the time they'd arrived at Whipsnade, he did. 492 00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:54,920 Still committed to life at home looking after Minto and Maureen, 493 00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:58,080 Lewis was now a full convert to Christianity. 494 00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,400 He saw it his duty to explain his new faith 495 00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:04,280 and began to write as a Christian apologist. 496 00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:08,800 The Screwtape Letters, about human temptation, 497 00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:13,160 describe how one senior devil instructs a junior devil. 498 00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:17,720 And The Problem Of Pain written in 1940 tries to explain 499 00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:20,800 how a loving God can allow us to suffer. 500 00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:22,920 EXPLOSION 501 00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:33,160 In summer 1940, France fell, and in September, 502 00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:37,080 the aerial bombardment of Britain's population began. 503 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:39,920 Lewis' writings chimed with hard times 504 00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,680 and his apologetics were inspirational fireside reading. 505 00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,080 But radio was the medium of the age, 506 00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:50,640 and the best means of broadcasting Lewis' words of comfort. 507 00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:55,360 'Almost certainly, God is not in Time. 508 00:31:55,360 --> 00:32:01,560 'He has infinity in which to listen to the split-second of prayer 509 00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:06,240 'put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.' 510 00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:10,920 At the beginning of the Second World War, the BBC asked Lewis to 511 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:16,200 give broadcast talks, a defence of the Christian religion. 512 00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,640 They had an immense effect. 513 00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,920 Many people regarded Lewis as the greatest broadcaster of the war. 514 00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,160 Many placed him above Churchill himself. 515 00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:29,560 'God has infinite attention. 516 00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:34,080 'You're as much alone with him as if you were the only thing 517 00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:35,640 'he'd ever created.' 518 00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:43,560 In 1952, Lewis published a version of his wartime talks. 519 00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:45,760 The book has never been out of print. 520 00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:48,640 Mere Christianity is one of his most popular books. 521 00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:51,200 One of the great strengths of Lewis' wartime talks 522 00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:53,280 One of the great strengths of Lewis' wartime talks 523 00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:56,280 is the way in which he's able to use language 524 00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:59,240 which really resonates with his audience. 525 00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:04,440 He tells stories, he uses analogies, he speaks in a very accessible way. 526 00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:09,560 One person was described it as a port wine and plum pudding voice. 527 00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:13,280 But there's an intellectual content to what Lewis is saying as well. 528 00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,480 It's not, "Here are very good reasons for believing in God," 529 00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:20,440 it's much more, "Look, if there were a god, 530 00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:23,520 "doesn't that make a lot of sense of what we experience within us 531 00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,480 "and observe around us?" 532 00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:33,440 The wartime broadcasts made him a star at home 533 00:33:33,440 --> 00:33:36,560 and the publication in 1942 of The Screwtape Letters 534 00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:39,280 made him an American celebrity. 535 00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:43,360 But by an irony, his ability to popularise theological ideas 536 00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:47,840 made him hated in the one place that really mattered to him - Oxford. 537 00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:56,240 Seen from the outside, at 44, Lewis was in his prime. 538 00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:59,240 But the Oxford academics weren't so impressed. 539 00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:02,400 What was an English don doing writing popular theology? 540 00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:06,040 Lewis was a spellbinding lecturer. 541 00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:09,360 So popular, they found it difficult to get lecture halls large enough 542 00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,400 to accommodate his audiences. 543 00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:13,480 He was by far the most distinguished member 544 00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:15,480 of the Oxford English faculty and yet, 545 00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:19,400 when it came to getting professorships and promotion, 546 00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:21,640 he was always passed over. Why? 547 00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:26,400 Because the mean-spirited Oxford dons resented his popularity. 548 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:30,440 Also, in post-war Oxford, Christianity was hated 549 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:35,120 and Lewis was really a martyr for his faith, much to Oxford's shame. 550 00:34:36,720 --> 00:34:39,000 'And when it came to finding relief, 551 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,640 'there wasn't so much at home, either.' 552 00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:47,800 Since 1930, Lewis and his brother had shared this house, 553 00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:50,920 The Kilns, with Minto and Maureen Moore. 554 00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,440 Today, the place is a shrine presided over 555 00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:57,160 by acolytes like Deborah Higgins. 556 00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:58,880 Welcome to The Kilns. 557 00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:02,480 Thank you very much indeed. Yes, come into the common room. Wonderful. 558 00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:04,960 This is where Lewis would've received you. 559 00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:07,760 It's also where Lewis did some writing. 560 00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,680 There was a desk under the window just like this one. 561 00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:13,200 There he is. Yes. 562 00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:17,000 He did have bookcases on either side of the fireplace. Lovely. 563 00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,360 He owned over 3,000 books himself, 564 00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:22,120 and then also have the map here of Narnia. 565 00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:26,320 A very lovely thing to have. Yes, it is. It's beautiful. 566 00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:29,960 This typewriter is our only original artefact from the two brothers 567 00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,200 and it's Major Warren Lewis' typewriter. 568 00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:34,720 It was on this very machine that he typed? Yes. 569 00:35:34,720 --> 00:35:37,600 He said in his diary he typed over 12,000 570 00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:39,600 of Lewis' fan mail letters. 571 00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:44,120 Let's take a look upstairs. Certainly. There's three bedrooms. 572 00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:45,720 That was Maureen's room... 573 00:35:45,720 --> 00:35:49,880 this one, which was Mrs Moore's room, and then this one which was 574 00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,680 CS Lewis' bedroom, so a very frugal room. 575 00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,040 They probably only had about two fires 576 00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:57,000 that were ever lit in the house. One... 577 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,320 Yes, there's often a picture of him wearing a thick dressing gown. Yes. 578 00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,240 In CS Lewis' letters, he writes someone and tells them that he 579 00:36:03,240 --> 00:36:06,400 reached out to get a cup of water and the water was frozen. 580 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,440 Conditions were wintry, all right. 581 00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:16,440 By the end of the war, Minto was 73 and her health was deteriorating. 582 00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:19,960 Warnie, now an alcoholic, increasingly depended on Jack. 583 00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:25,560 Lewis' faith might have been holding him together at home, 584 00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:27,960 but his confidence was seriously shaken 585 00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:30,360 one February evening in 1948. 586 00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,680 The Socratic Society was a Christian debating club. 587 00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,040 CS Lewis often came to debate the philosophical implications of 588 00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:45,240 Christianity or how these religious ideas impacted on society at large. 589 00:36:45,240 --> 00:36:48,560 He must have looked forward to one of his debating evenings 590 00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,760 in which the cut and thrust of the famous Lewis 591 00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,640 was on display and his opponents were all over the floor. 592 00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:57,640 How wrong he was. 593 00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:05,280 Sir Anthony Kenny was a priest before he became a philosopher. 594 00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,120 He knew Lewis' debating opponent well, 595 00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:11,560 an immensely gifted scholar named Elizabeth Anscombe. 596 00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:14,560 As a philosopher, she would become legendary, 597 00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:16,400 as would her encounter with Lewis. 598 00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:21,280 Lewis had published a book called Miracles 599 00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:28,000 in which he maintained that if everything that we say and think 600 00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:32,920 is the result of purely mechanical processes in our brain, 601 00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,480 then there can't be any value, 602 00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:39,400 there can't be any truth, nothing can be either true or false. 603 00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:44,960 And Anscombe refuted this with a rather simple argument. 604 00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:50,080 She said, "Suppose I stand on one of those weighing machines 605 00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:52,600 "that say, 'I speak your weight.' 606 00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:57,680 "And it says to me, 'You weigh 15 stone', that is true 607 00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:01,400 "even though it is produced by totally mechanical means." 608 00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:05,400 And this simple argument did really undercut Lewis' position. 609 00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:08,440 It's a paradox, isn't it? Because a lot of people 610 00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:12,280 saw it as a conflict between the Christian Lewis 611 00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:15,400 and this bright, sparky, young woman but in fact she was 612 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:17,160 fervently Christian as well. 613 00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:19,160 Yes, she was a very devout Roman Catholic. 614 00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:22,400 That was what particularly wounded Lewis, 615 00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:26,840 he felt they should have been allies fighting side-by-side 616 00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:30,400 in the battle against naturalism and secularism. 617 00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:34,360 And here he was, brought down by friendly fire. 618 00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:41,280 After the Anscombe debate, Lewis felt humiliated. 619 00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:44,560 I remember Dyson telling me that he'd come back to the pub, 620 00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,440 Lewis, and he put his head in his hands and said, 621 00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,160 "I've been utterly crushed, I've been humiliated." 622 00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:55,720 And he wrote afterwards that he'd been obliterated as an apologist. 623 00:38:55,720 --> 00:38:58,760 And it's very striking that after that moment, 624 00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,320 Lewis wrote no more Christian apologetics 625 00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:03,720 aimed at converting unbelievers. 626 00:39:03,720 --> 00:39:07,760 He'd already written a highly successful space trilogy 627 00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,560 and he'd been dabbling with the idea of children's stories, 628 00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:13,920 but it's surely no accident that after his humiliation 629 00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,760 in a philosophical debate in Oxford, 630 00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:20,360 he turned to the world beyond the wardrobe. 631 00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:30,200 Even before they were adapted for television in 1988, 632 00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:35,320 the Narnia books had made CS Lewis a household name all over the world. 633 00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,800 The four children in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe 634 00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:54,280 go to stay in the house of a Professor Kirke, who bears more than a passing resemblance 635 00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,800 to Kirkpatrick, Lewis' old tutor. 636 00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:01,120 They find at top of his house a magic wardrobe, 637 00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:05,360 when they pass through it they've entered the land of Narnia. 638 00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,400 When the professor discovers that they've had this experience, 639 00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:11,320 he's amazed that they haven't related it 640 00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:12,960 to reading the philosopher Plato. 641 00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:15,960 Plato who believed that this world 642 00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,560 was but the shadow of a real world beyond. 643 00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,920 In another way you could say the Narnia stories 644 00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:27,640 were an enactment of that great conversation he had with Tolkien 645 00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:31,640 about a myth which happened to be true. 646 00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:34,560 This magical world of Narnia 647 00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:37,600 was a work of Lewis' imagination, 648 00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:40,720 but it's easy to see the influences of the landscape 649 00:40:40,720 --> 00:40:43,200 that Jack and Warnie grew up in, 650 00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:49,120 of northerness, thin light and remnants of a land beyond. 651 00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:53,520 Almost the first physical contact that Lewis had with the Middle Ages 652 00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:57,040 must have been in the ruined castles of Northern Ireland, 653 00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:59,600 where he had holidays with his mother. 654 00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:03,320 Just up the bay from here, Dunluce Castle, 655 00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:09,720 which many people think is the model for Cair Paravel the castle in Narnia. 656 00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:13,840 At the end of the Narnia stories in The Last Battle, 657 00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:18,440 Cair Paravel is besieged and it seems as though everything is lost 658 00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:20,280 and the children believe 659 00:41:20,280 --> 00:41:23,360 that the forces of good have been defeated. 660 00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:27,480 But they learn that everything they've loved in this life 661 00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:30,880 has actually been preserved for them. 662 00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:33,920 A very potent image by Lewis. 663 00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:37,560 A feeling that all his longings 664 00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:41,480 and all the things he's loved and lost in this life 665 00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,320 will, in fact, be kept and preserved. 666 00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:52,720 As with the buried childhood toys in the garden of Little Lea, 667 00:41:52,720 --> 00:41:57,400 Lewis clung onto the hope that the love he had for his lost mother 668 00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:01,440 would in some way be saved, unspoiled by separation. 669 00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,720 The Narnia Chronicles come straight from the heart 670 00:42:06,720 --> 00:42:09,320 and it is in these adventures we see most clearly 671 00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:14,680 the combination of Lewis the Christian and Lewis the medievalist. 672 00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:17,960 I think what he was doing with the whole world of Narnia 673 00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,720 was developing a world which makes symbolism true. 674 00:42:21,720 --> 00:42:26,520 Whether or not you think our real world is symbolic of a higher reality, 675 00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:29,880 it's very clear that Lewis' invented Narnian world 676 00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:34,200 is symbolic of some higher reality that he was reaching toward. 677 00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:39,920 I mean, when you have for example Aslan the lion giving up his life as he lies on the slab, 678 00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,720 it's a symbol of Christ's atoning sacrifice. Right, exactly. 679 00:42:43,720 --> 00:42:48,680 What we suddenly get is an access of really sharp medieval theology, 680 00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:54,480 because we have Aslan explain when he's resurrected...explain to the children 681 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,440 that what he's done is play a trick on the evil queen, 682 00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:04,080 whereby she has been tricked into sacrificing an innocent who had no guilt 683 00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:10,200 in the place of someone else who was guilty and therefore the magic is broken, death is overturned. 684 00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:15,520 Now that is absolutely the theory of Christ's crucifixion in the Middle Ages. Hmm. 685 00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:19,320 And there it is set out in the middle of this children's book. 686 00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:25,040 Lewis had no children of his own. 687 00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:27,280 He'd started his relationship with Mrs Moore 688 00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,360 when he was 19 and she was 45, 689 00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:33,520 so even if they'd married they could hardly have had children. 690 00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:37,480 But she had children and she was a very motherly type and, indeed, 691 00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:41,640 adopted in an informal way quite a lot of children over the years. 692 00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,640 And when war came this house, The Kilns, 693 00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:47,320 filled up with evacuee children. 694 00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:55,600 Amongst them a Londoner named June Flewett, who in 1942 joined them as an evacuee. 695 00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:58,440 She would grow up to become actress Jill Raymond, 696 00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:01,160 then wife of MP Clement Freud. 697 00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:03,800 She adored Lewis' books, 698 00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:08,720 but at first Jill had no idea who the tweedy owner of The Kilns was. 699 00:44:08,720 --> 00:44:11,480 I'd been there two or three days which he arrived 700 00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:16,720 and I was in the kitchen and Mrs Moore said, "Oh, here's Jack." 701 00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:20,800 I was able to chat him quite happily as a 16-year-old girl 702 00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:25,720 until a few days later when I looked at the book shelves 703 00:44:25,720 --> 00:44:29,800 and saw all these books by CS Lewis. 704 00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:34,240 He was my hero but I had no idea that it was Jack. 705 00:44:34,240 --> 00:44:37,760 Certainly, I should think for nearly a week, 706 00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:41,880 I was unable to look at him, to speak to him. 707 00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:44,480 I felt so shy. HE LAUGHS 708 00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,360 I just thought he was wonderful, which he was. 709 00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,160 Jack was an extremely kind man to you personally. Oh... 710 00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,240 he was...the kindest person. 711 00:44:55,240 --> 00:44:59,480 I mean, when I left, he paid my fees 712 00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,360 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for two years. 713 00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:06,480 I could never have had that training without him. 714 00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:11,520 He changed my life, because he allowed me to become a professional actress. 715 00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:16,360 Jill is possibly the only person surviving who knew Minto 716 00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,520 and who witnessed the relationship between her and Jack. 717 00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:25,160 It was the most loving...gentle, 718 00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:28,240 kind relationship between the two of them. 719 00:45:28,240 --> 00:45:33,880 More visibly from his side, because she was...she was a feisty lady 720 00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:37,640 and I don't think she showed her emotions very easily. 721 00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:40,080 When I got there, I found 722 00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:45,520 that she had open varicose ulcers on her legs. 723 00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:51,520 But Jack was so gentle with her and so kind and so loving and always... 724 00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:56,960 looking after her and trying to do the best for her that he could. 725 00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:02,280 Lewis was a man with a strong desire to change lives for the better, 726 00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:05,720 but there was one person he couldn't much help. 727 00:46:05,720 --> 00:46:11,640 Minto, his first love, had been there for Jack for 33 years, 728 00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:17,480 but she was suffering from dementia and he was fretted by two worries, 729 00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:21,920 the illness itself and having to find £500 a year 730 00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:24,080 to pay for her care. 731 00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:28,600 And then in January 1951, 732 00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:34,000 the worry was taken from him, dear old Minto died. 733 00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:42,960 The death of the second woman he had so loved must have reminded him of the first, 734 00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:46,320 of his mother whom he lost at the tender age of nine. 735 00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:49,960 A time when he felt so terribly alone. 736 00:46:52,720 --> 00:46:56,120 In 1954, the University of Cambridge 737 00:46:56,120 --> 00:47:01,920 offered its first chair of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature to Lewis. 738 00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:06,720 It was a post tailor-made and designed with him in mind. 739 00:47:06,720 --> 00:47:08,240 His Allegory of Love 740 00:47:08,240 --> 00:47:12,920 was the standard text on courtly love and he'd just completed 741 00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:16,440 his impressive volume on 16th-century literature. 742 00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:22,880 It's astonishing then that when Cambridge offered him the job, he declined it...twice. 743 00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:26,040 His reasons were entirely emotional. 744 00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,400 Lewis believed when Cambridge offered him this job 745 00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:33,960 that he'd have to come for the whole term, eight weeks and more, 746 00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:37,880 so be away from Oxford for the best part of two or three months. 747 00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:40,880 And this was something he felt he just couldn't do. 748 00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,880 Partly he loved the pubs and his friends at Oxford, 749 00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:47,400 but the real reason was Warnie. 750 00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:52,600 He was the only person who'd really care for Warnie when Warnie was in the grip of alcoholism. 751 00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:56,080 Obviously, Jack couldn't explain that to Cambridge, 752 00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:58,800 but Professor Tolkien was the hero of the hour, 753 00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:03,600 he told Cambridge that Lewis was frightened of leaving Oxford for such a long time 754 00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:06,480 and they said, "Of course, you can commute." 755 00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:09,720 After he learnt that, Lewis accepted the job. 756 00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:22,640 Lewis immediately liked Cambridge 757 00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:25,880 and, unlike Oxford, Cambridge liked him. 758 00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:30,680 Lewis decided the fenland town was smaller, softer 759 00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:33,520 and more old-fashioned. 760 00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:37,280 Jack gave his first lecture on his 56th birthday, 761 00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,280 29th of November. 1954. 762 00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:43,800 The move to a new university made the headlines, 763 00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:47,240 the BBC even considered doing a live broadcast 764 00:48:47,240 --> 00:48:51,240 of a lecture which promised to be an absolute corker. 765 00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:55,560 Lewis presented to an appreciative audience 766 00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:59,760 not an argument but a man, himself. 767 00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:02,840 The Old World from classical times to the 19th century 768 00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:09,600 was all essentially the same, then came machines and atheism. 769 00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:16,160 Lewis wasn't part of the modern, unbelieving, technologically advancing world. 770 00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:20,360 He was prehistoric and glad of it. 771 00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:23,920 He ended his lecture by telling his Cambridge audience 772 00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:27,920 that what they'd hired was an example of "Old Western Man". 773 00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:31,760 He was selling himself as a kind of intellectual dinosaur 774 00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:34,240 It was rather an absurd claim since he belonged 775 00:49:34,240 --> 00:49:37,360 to the same generation as the people to whom he was speaking. 776 00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:42,960 What I suppose he meant was he was a modern man who simply hated being modern. 777 00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:45,760 But it made wonderful theatre. 778 00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:54,360 'Speaking not for myself but for all other western men, 779 00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:56,680 'old western men whom you may meet, 780 00:49:56,680 --> 00:50:01,120 'I would say use your specimens while you can... 781 00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:04,720 'there aren't going to be very many more dinosaurs.' 782 00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:13,640 Despite Lewis' insistence that he firmly belonged in the past, 783 00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:16,120 it looked as though he would last for ever. 784 00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:21,000 He had 13 more books in him and more than 40 articles and papers. 785 00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:24,600 The Four Loves in 1960, was the mature reflections 786 00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:28,720 of a man who could look back on a lifetime of relationships. 787 00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:34,680 With the wartime publication in the United States of The Screwtape Letters, 788 00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:37,800 Lewis had become internationally famous. 789 00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:41,360 With that fame came a vast correspondence, 790 00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:43,800 particularly American. 791 00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:47,040 Lewis made a point of replying to everyone. 792 00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:50,960 He had hundreds of pen friends. 793 00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:55,800 And one August day in 1952 found him in this hotel, The Eastgate, 794 00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:59,080 awaiting a meeting with one of those pen friends. 795 00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,960 He'd never met her, she was an American woman, 796 00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:06,120 and they'd agreed to meet here for a cup of tea and a chat. 797 00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:15,400 Joy Davidman was a former Communist and aspiring writer, 798 00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:19,080 married but very unhappily with two sons. 799 00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:23,960 She was 16 years younger than Jack Lewis and fell in love with him 800 00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:25,520 or with the idea of him. 801 00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:31,120 Douglas Gresham was the younger of Joy's two sons, 802 00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:36,000 he and his brother David would eventually become Jack's stepsons. 803 00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:41,520 He had never before met a mind quite so active and quite so broadly educated as hers. 804 00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:46,320 Really? Absolutely. She was actually more widely read than he was. 805 00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,520 Jack had read everything in Europe, 806 00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:52,160 but my mother had read everything in Europe and everything in America as well. 807 00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:56,560 Do you think at that stage they were friends really rather than...? Very good friends indeed. 808 00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:01,000 And, of course, she'd been communicating with Jack by mail for some years. Oh, she had? 809 00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,720 Yes, indeed. And, of course, she was divorced? Yes. 810 00:52:03,720 --> 00:52:07,360 The Foreign Office had said that they were not going to renew her visitor's visa. 811 00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:08,640 Jack very charitably said, 812 00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:13,040 "Well, look, the answer to this if you're so insistent you really, really want to stay in England, 813 00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:17,640 I'd rather you did, why don't we have a civil marriage ceremony?" It was his idea. 814 00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,680 But it wasn't the marriage of love at that stage? No, it wasn't. 815 00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,480 I think that didn't happen till quite sometime later. 816 00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:30,800 Lewis called his autobiography Surprised By Joy 817 00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:33,920 and now he really was surprised by a person called Joy 818 00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,400 and so were his friends. 819 00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:40,960 Bachelor Lewis had now become the stepfather of two little boys 820 00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:44,360 and the fusty old Kilns was being knocked into shape 821 00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:47,600 by an energetic American woman. 822 00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:53,880 But it wasn't to be long before everything turned to catastrophe. 823 00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:56,880 The telephone rang. And she'd been in pain 824 00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:00,240 with what was diagnosed as sciatica and things like that for some time. 825 00:53:00,240 --> 00:53:03,560 Quite a large amount of pain and she went to answer the telephone, 826 00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:06,200 tripped and snapped her thigh bone. 827 00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:08,760 She was taken off to hospital and found to be suffering from 828 00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:11,480 what they thought was going to be very shortly terminal cancer. 829 00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:15,200 I was taken to the hospital having come back from school 830 00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:17,560 to be told that my mother was dying. 831 00:53:17,560 --> 00:53:20,720 And I was ten years old and I knew no other human being in the world 832 00:53:20,720 --> 00:53:23,680 really to relate to other than my mother. 833 00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:27,800 She was expected to die within days or weeks and not to live any longer than that. 834 00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:31,680 Jack had been here before. 835 00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:35,720 Both women closest to him he had loved and lost 836 00:53:35,720 --> 00:53:38,680 and memories must have rushed back, 837 00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:41,760 but with them...something new. 838 00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:47,800 The agonies of a woman he'd married as a favour seem to have inspired something deeper. 839 00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:55,040 He wrote to his friend Dorothy L Sayers, "We soon learn to love what we know we must lose." 840 00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:58,880 Joy might not have long and he needed to act fast. 841 00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,720 He asked a pupil of his now a priest named Peter Bide 842 00:54:02,720 --> 00:54:07,520 for a bedside marriage, this time with a Christian ceremony. 843 00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:12,040 Peter Bide said, "What else could I do? The woman was dying! Lewis clearly loved her." 844 00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:16,440 Peter Bide had had a history of...healing. 845 00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:18,920 I think Lewis felt that that actually happened, 846 00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:22,360 because Joy went into remission shortly afterwards. 847 00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:28,000 And Lewis and Joy seemed to have enjoyed at least some time of relative happiness 848 00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:31,520 before, unfortunately, the cancer came back. 849 00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:41,040 In July 1960, Joy Lewis died at home with her husband at her bedside. 850 00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:45,280 He was plunged into despair, left doubting the very God 851 00:54:45,280 --> 00:54:50,960 he'd spent so many years explaining, championing, defending, believing. 852 00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:55,400 He had held on to his faith when Minto died, 853 00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:57,520 now Lewis felt abandoned. 854 00:54:57,520 --> 00:55:02,240 His crisis of faith would be the last great turmoil of his life. 855 00:55:02,240 --> 00:55:07,040 "No-one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." 856 00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:11,200 They're the opening words of A Grief Observed. 857 00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:15,400 And the manuscript is preserved here in the Bodleian library. 858 00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:19,360 It's an intensely moving thing looking at this manuscript. 859 00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:24,160 It's written almost without correction, only 34 pages, 860 00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:28,560 every one of which is so raw, so grief-stricken, 861 00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:31,120 so full of pain, so honest. 862 00:55:31,120 --> 00:55:36,880 And I think that's why it made such an enormous impact on so many different readers. 863 00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:39,320 Whether you're contemplating your own death, 864 00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:43,840 or whether you're in the hideous agony of grieving for somebody you love, 865 00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:46,720 this is a book which speaks to you. 866 00:55:49,280 --> 00:55:52,160 Do you think he lost his faith after she died? 867 00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:54,240 I don't think Lewis lost his faith, 868 00:55:54,240 --> 00:55:58,160 I think it went through a period of recalibration. 869 00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:03,240 I think that Lewis began to realise that simplistic rationalisations of faith 870 00:56:03,240 --> 00:56:05,080 actually had their limits, 871 00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:09,440 and there were certain things that couldn't quite be put in those simple categories 872 00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:11,720 he'd used earlier in this career. 873 00:56:11,720 --> 00:56:17,280 Many would say that A Grief Observed is a much more mature and wise and raw book 874 00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:21,040 than the simple rationalist argument of A Problem Of Pain. 875 00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:29,800 BIRDSONG 876 00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:36,320 Jack joined Joy and Minto just three years later, 877 00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:41,760 dying from prostate cancer only seven days short of his 65th birthday 878 00:56:41,760 --> 00:56:45,480 on the 22nd November, 1963. 879 00:56:48,960 --> 00:56:52,320 On that bleak, raw November day 880 00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:55,240 almost nobody came to the burial. 881 00:56:55,240 --> 00:56:58,120 Warnie had taken to his bed, 882 00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:02,160 too drunk to tell anybody the time of the funeral. 883 00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:06,880 And in the world at large, in the newspaper, on the wireless, 884 00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:08,880 Jack's death was overshadowed 885 00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:12,840 by the news of President Kennedy's assassination on the very same day 886 00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:15,520 and the passing of Aldous Huxley. 887 00:57:15,520 --> 00:57:21,320 So his death like so much in CS Lewis' life... 888 00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:23,960 was almost a secret. 889 00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:47,240 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 890 00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:49,960 ALL: Amen. 891 00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:03,680 Lewis set himself up as an intellectual at war with his own times, 892 00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:05,720 but he wasn't really an intellectual, 893 00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:10,440 he was always a man guided by his heart rather than by his head. 894 00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:16,120 In fact, he had the temperament of a poet even though he couldn't write poetry 895 00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:22,760 And although he was a man who lived his life in an exclusive male world of colleges, 896 00:58:22,760 --> 00:58:29,640 that life was punctuated by the loss of the three women he loved. 897 00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:32,640 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd