The Life of C S Lewis

In November we celebrated the life of C S Lewis – a writer who not only wrote his own masterpieces but influenced the writing of other famous authors and their books, including Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29 November 1898 and died on 22 November 1963 – the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. He was born into a family of bookworms and was surrounded by limitless books, thus he grew up reading. He loved to write and by the time he was five, he’d written a story about a fantasy land, influenced by one of his favourite writers, Beatrix Potter.

Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His first book was a collection of poetry he wrote as a teenager. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford. He enlisted in the British Army in 1917 and was discharged in 1918 after being wounded. Following this he became a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.

Lewis wrote more than thirty books during his career, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. He released the first book in his popular Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in 1950. The series contains Christian ideas whilst also borrowing characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales . Whilst alive, Lewis did not permit movies or film of his work as he felt that any movie would fall short of depicting the characters and settings accurately. With the advancement in technology however, such effects and settings have become achievable. Live-action film adaptations have been made of three of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).

Overdue Books

As we are approaching the end of the school year, can students please return any overdue library books. Library staff will be contacting all students with overdue items over the coming week.