0:00:02 > 0:00:04An enormous crowd gathers in Westminster Abbey to mark
0:00:04 > 0:00:08the addition of a new name to those of the dramatists and scribes
0:00:08 > 0:00:10remembered in Poets' Corner.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14Among our great national poets, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare,
0:00:14 > 0:00:19they are commemorating a man who is very well known for his prose,
0:00:19 > 0:00:22not so well known for writing verse.
0:00:24 > 0:00:27CS Lewis wasn't a great poet,
0:00:27 > 0:00:30but his prose guarantees him immortality.
0:00:30 > 0:00:34People think of CS Lewis as the author of the Chronicles Of Narnia.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37But the Narnia tales were only the smallest fraction
0:00:37 > 0:00:40of a vast literary output.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43Lewis was an atheist who became a zealous Christian
0:00:43 > 0:00:48who dedicated himself a rational basis for the faith.
0:00:48 > 0:00:51I'd like to deal with the difficulty some people find
0:00:51 > 0:00:53about the whole idea of prayer.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57His theological books and broadcasts made him one of
0:00:57 > 0:01:00the made most influential Christian thinkers of the modern age.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04Almost certainly, God is not in Time.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09But theology wasn't his real job.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12Lewis was, in fact, a scholar of medieval literature,
0:01:12 > 0:01:13and a great teacher.
0:01:14 > 0:01:1920 years ago, I wrote a biography of Clive Staples Lewis,
0:01:19 > 0:01:22and I suppose what fascinated me about him
0:01:22 > 0:01:24was he was a man of contrasts.
0:01:24 > 0:01:27He lived through the first part of the 20th century,
0:01:27 > 0:01:29but he hated the modern age.
0:01:29 > 0:01:33He was a popular theologian, but he had great crisis of faith.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37He was an extremely clever person, but a total incompetent.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40He failed the driving test 17 times.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43He ended his days as a university professor,
0:01:43 > 0:01:46but he was always a man who at key moments
0:01:46 > 0:01:50was ruled not by his head but by his heart.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03Lewis wrote over 60 books and essays for adults,
0:02:03 > 0:02:08but is best remembered for the seven stories he wrote for children.
0:02:08 > 0:02:10It's said that CS Lewis' Narnia stories
0:02:10 > 0:02:14have sold over 100 million copies.
0:02:14 > 0:02:16And for those many fans, he is a hero.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21The chief characters in the stories are children,
0:02:21 > 0:02:25and the formative influence his own childhood.
0:02:25 > 0:02:28But was that a happy childhood? Absolutely not.
0:02:30 > 0:02:33CS Lewis was born in 1898.
0:02:34 > 0:02:38His parents were surprisingly liberal for their time.
0:02:38 > 0:02:41He grew up surrounded by books on all subjects,
0:02:41 > 0:02:43with no limit to what he could read.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48Lewis would make his life and his fame
0:02:48 > 0:02:50in the most English of surroundings.
0:02:51 > 0:02:55But he was in fact an Ulsterman, from Belfast.
0:02:57 > 0:03:02This is the Little Lea, the house which Albert Lewis,
0:03:02 > 0:03:05a prosperous Belfast solicitor, had built for his family.
0:03:05 > 0:03:06And it's the scene
0:03:06 > 0:03:11of all CS Lewis' earliest childhood imaginative experiences.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18At the end of an upstairs corridor,
0:03:18 > 0:03:20in what they called "the little end room,"
0:03:20 > 0:03:23Clive, known as Jack, and his brother Warren,
0:03:23 > 0:03:27known as Warnie, created a fantasy world.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32In his autobiography, "Surprised By Joy,"
0:03:32 > 0:03:36Jack Lewis recalls a moss and twig diorama forest
0:03:36 > 0:03:40that Warnie made for him on a biscuit tin lid.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44The first sight of it awakened an obsession with the natural world,
0:03:44 > 0:03:47but a hyperreal version of it.
0:03:47 > 0:03:50Magical, surreal, mythic.
0:03:50 > 0:03:54Something more pungent than the real thing.
0:03:54 > 0:03:58He called it "Paradise," the first beauty he ever knew.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03This was the beginning of Lewis' sense of longing,
0:04:03 > 0:04:08an elation felt and immediately lost, like fragrance.
0:04:08 > 0:04:12He described it as "An unsatisfied desire
0:04:12 > 0:04:16"that is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."
0:04:17 > 0:04:19In German, they call it Sehnsucht.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25It was a rapture he experienced when reading the poet Longfellow,
0:04:25 > 0:04:28on seeing a flowering bush in the garden,
0:04:28 > 0:04:30and, most significantly,
0:04:30 > 0:04:33when reading of the bushy-tailed superhero
0:04:33 > 0:04:35Squirrel Nutkin.
0:04:45 > 0:04:47Like most children of his generation,
0:04:47 > 0:04:50Lewis had read stories about talking animals.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52The mad March Hare in Lewis Carroll,
0:04:52 > 0:04:56or the clothed creatures in Beatrix Potter.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00So, it's hardly surprising when he started to invent his own stories
0:05:00 > 0:05:03as a child, his invented world, Boxen,
0:05:03 > 0:05:05was a place full of talking animals.
0:05:14 > 0:05:18Jack and Warnie were happy in their imaginative worlds,
0:05:18 > 0:05:20but their joy was short-lived.
0:05:20 > 0:05:26In 1908, when Jack was only nine, their mother Flora died from cancer.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30Poor little Jack, tormented by toothache,
0:05:30 > 0:05:32called out for his mother in the dark, and she didn't come.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35And he couldn't understand why she didn't come.
0:05:35 > 0:05:41And he called again, and his father came to him in tears
0:05:41 > 0:05:43and broke the news.
0:05:43 > 0:05:45It was always devastating to Lewis
0:05:45 > 0:05:48that he'd never had the chance to say goodbye to his mother.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53Before the death there was the happy, golden childhood
0:05:53 > 0:05:55in Northern Ireland.
0:05:55 > 0:05:58After it, there was the dark.
0:05:59 > 0:06:04He later wrote, "It was all sea and islands now.
0:06:04 > 0:06:10"The great continent had sunk, like Atlantis."
0:06:20 > 0:06:25The most recent biographer of CS Lewis is Alister McGrath.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29He vividly captures the child who would become the great man.
0:06:30 > 0:06:32The death of Flora Lewis
0:06:32 > 0:06:35really brought that idyllic period to an end.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39It meant that Lewis had lost the lodestar of his life, I think.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43It's very clear that Lewis saw his mother as a figure of stability.
0:06:43 > 0:06:46His father's decision to send Lewis away to boarding school
0:06:46 > 0:06:49in England immediately after his mother's death - I mean,
0:06:49 > 0:06:52it may have been well-intentioned, but it was a mistake.
0:06:52 > 0:06:55And, I think, led to alienation between Lewis and his father,
0:06:55 > 0:06:59but also, I think, led Lewis to really feel lonely,
0:06:59 > 0:07:01isolated and wondering, "Why on earth?"
0:07:01 > 0:07:05Things were all about, how could he reconnect with a lost family life?
0:07:08 > 0:07:12Being sent to school in England so soon after Flora's death
0:07:12 > 0:07:15was something the nine-year-old Lewis felt acutely.
0:07:15 > 0:07:19He never forgot the horrible experience of sitting on the boat
0:07:19 > 0:07:24going over to England for the first time and hearing the English voices.
0:07:24 > 0:07:26They made him feel an alien.
0:07:27 > 0:07:30And although he spent all his grown-up life in England,
0:07:30 > 0:07:34he never quite lost that sense, that sense of alienation
0:07:34 > 0:07:38which went, as his strong imagination developed,
0:07:38 > 0:07:41with this romantic feeling of yearning and longing
0:07:41 > 0:07:43for something that was forever lost.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51MUSIC: "Siegfried's Funeral March" by Richard Wagner
0:07:58 > 0:08:01Lewis hated his English schools.
0:08:01 > 0:08:06He later described his experiences as worse than life in the trenches.
0:08:07 > 0:08:12In his utter misery, he retreated into a world of fantasy.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15And it was at his English boarding school in 1911
0:08:15 > 0:08:20that he made two key discoveries in his emotional and aesthetic journey.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26The sight of the mythic creatures in Arthur Rackham's illustration
0:08:26 > 0:08:31for Wagner's Ring Cycle stirred romantic urges in Lewis.
0:08:32 > 0:08:35And when hearing Wagner's music
0:08:35 > 0:08:39of Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods itself,
0:08:39 > 0:08:44he was transported to what he describes as "pure Northernness,"
0:08:44 > 0:08:46a vision of huge, clear spaces
0:08:46 > 0:08:49hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight.
0:08:52 > 0:08:54Lewis was a sensitive youth,
0:08:54 > 0:08:57appalled by the brutality of public school.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01He loathed athleticism, he couldn't catch a ball or wield a bat.
0:09:01 > 0:09:04He used to say his whole life would have been different
0:09:04 > 0:09:06if he'd had different thumbs.
0:09:06 > 0:09:08He had these weird thumbs he'd inherited from his father,
0:09:08 > 0:09:10that there was no joint in his thumb.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13He could wield a pen all right, and always used a dip pen.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18Luckily for him, his education was about to pass into the hands
0:09:18 > 0:09:22of a man who cared not one jot about sporting prowess.
0:09:26 > 0:09:30William Kirkpatrick was a patrician classicist from Northern Ireland
0:09:30 > 0:09:33who'd taught Lewis' father.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36On realising Jack's unhappiness at boarding school,
0:09:36 > 0:09:39Albert Lewis decided to send his son to Kirkpatrick.
0:09:39 > 0:09:42And it was Kirkpatrick who finished -
0:09:42 > 0:09:45or, perhaps, started - Jack Lewis' education at his home
0:09:45 > 0:09:48in the leafy Surrey village of Great Bookham.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51Kirkpatrick was waiting to meet the train,
0:09:51 > 0:09:53and the shy Lewis happened to remark
0:09:53 > 0:09:56that he was surprised to find the countryside of Surrey so wild.
0:09:56 > 0:09:59"Stop!" Said Kirkpatrick. "What do you mean by wild?
0:09:59 > 0:10:01"And why should you have a presupposition
0:10:01 > 0:10:05"about the nature of a countryside you've never seen in your life?"
0:10:08 > 0:10:13Over three years, Kirkpatrick re-engineered Lewis intellectually,
0:10:13 > 0:10:17making him a hardened dialectician, logician and orator.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22By 18 years old, Lewis read the classics in the original languages
0:10:22 > 0:10:25and could retain them all.
0:10:25 > 0:10:27And there was another transformation.
0:10:27 > 0:10:32The Ulster Protestant boy had turned into an Ulster Protestant atheist.
0:10:32 > 0:10:34Like Kirkpatrick himself.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38At 17 years old, Lewis no longer believed in heaven.
0:10:38 > 0:10:42But he was about to step into an earthly hell.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47Europe was in the throes of war.
0:10:49 > 0:10:54And although Lewis won a place at Oxford to read classics in 1917,
0:10:54 > 0:10:58he almost immediately volunteered for active service...
0:10:58 > 0:11:00and was sent here to Keble College,
0:11:00 > 0:11:03which had been requisitioned for officer training.
0:11:05 > 0:11:08The cadets were arranged alphabetically in the dormitory,
0:11:08 > 0:11:13and in the next-door bed was Paddy Moore, a young Irish boy,
0:11:13 > 0:11:16very charming, with whom Lewis formed a friendship.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20With their imminent departure to the front line,
0:11:20 > 0:11:22Jack and Paddy made a pact.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25If one of them didn't come back,
0:11:25 > 0:11:27they'd care for the parents of the other.
0:11:27 > 0:11:33Jack's father, Albert Lewis, or Paddy's mother, Janie Moore.
0:11:33 > 0:11:38Paddy was sent to France in October 1917,
0:11:38 > 0:11:42and Jack arrived a month later on his 19th birthday.
0:11:43 > 0:11:45In writing about CS Lewis,
0:11:45 > 0:11:47I was interested in the psychological turning points
0:11:47 > 0:11:51that made him, and perplexed that the First World War
0:11:51 > 0:11:54didn't seem to have been one of them.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57He experienced the horror of trench warfare,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00took prisoner a whole German platoon, and was wounded by shrapnel
0:12:00 > 0:12:03that killed comrades standing next to him.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06Fellow-combatants like Sassoon, Graves
0:12:06 > 0:12:10and Rupert Brooke were inspired to write great poetry.
0:12:10 > 0:12:13Lewis also wrote verse in the trenches,
0:12:13 > 0:12:16but the collection, Spirits In Bondage,
0:12:16 > 0:12:18was unremarkable.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21He seems not to have been much moved by the horror of it all.
0:12:21 > 0:12:25He described the experience as "unimportant."
0:12:25 > 0:12:27Was he in denial?
0:12:27 > 0:12:32In Surprised By Joy, Lewis uses a very interesting phrase,
0:12:32 > 0:12:34"a treaty with reality."
0:12:34 > 0:12:38What he means by that is, in effect, there is a firewall
0:12:38 > 0:12:39he has constructed,
0:12:39 > 0:12:43which keeps unsettling thoughts firmly on its other side.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46My own feeling is that the reason he does this
0:12:46 > 0:12:48is he found it so traumatic
0:12:48 > 0:12:52that he even finds remembering it very, very difficult.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00The War would, in fact, be a turning point for Jack Lewis.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03Not creatively, but emotionally.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05Through his friendship with Paddy Moore,
0:13:05 > 0:13:08he met the woman with whom he'd spend most of his life.
0:13:09 > 0:13:15On the 24th of March 1918, Paddy was indeed killed in action.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18And Jack kept his part of the bargain,
0:13:18 > 0:13:20to look after Paddy's mother.
0:13:24 > 0:13:28With peace came a return to University College, Oxford.
0:13:28 > 0:13:30He had rooms in college,
0:13:30 > 0:13:33but he was living in the suburbs with Mrs Moore.
0:13:33 > 0:13:36He was 20, she was 46.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43Today, the CS Lewis industry includes tourism.
0:13:43 > 0:13:45Guide Peter Cousin is familiar
0:13:45 > 0:13:49with the succession of cheap lodging houses around Oxford
0:13:49 > 0:13:54where Lewis and Mrs Moore, or Minto, as he called her,
0:13:54 > 0:13:56lived between 1919 and 1930.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59We're going to view the first accommodation
0:13:59 > 0:14:04where Mrs Moore and Lewis had rooms.
0:14:04 > 0:14:05Oh, yes, look - Anstey Villa.
0:14:05 > 0:14:07It's quite a modest house.
0:14:07 > 0:14:10Yes, it would be two or three-bedroom.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13It was much more modest than the house that Lewis was brought up in.
0:14:13 > 0:14:14Oh, yes.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16They still had old gaslights,
0:14:16 > 0:14:18and it definitely wouldn't have had any central heating.
0:14:18 > 0:14:20No!
0:14:20 > 0:14:23It's very touching to think of them there, isn't it, Peter?
0:14:23 > 0:14:25It is, actually. Yes.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28All the letters that Lewis wrote to his father Albert
0:14:28 > 0:14:31- have always got a college address. - Yep.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34He's trying to hide this relationship with Mrs Moore.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39Lewis kept secret his relationship with Minto,
0:14:39 > 0:14:41not just because he was adept
0:14:41 > 0:14:44at compartmentalising emotional matters -
0:14:44 > 0:14:48there were practical reasons for the subterfuge.
0:14:48 > 0:14:50As an undergraduate at Oxford,
0:14:50 > 0:14:52he was meant to be living in his college.
0:14:54 > 0:14:59It's hard for us to imagine just how strict Oxford was in those days.
0:14:59 > 0:15:02I had an old friend who was a few years younger than Lewis,
0:15:02 > 0:15:05who was sacked in the 1920s from the University
0:15:05 > 0:15:09for spending one night with a woman in Reading.
0:15:09 > 0:15:11Lewis was living with Mrs Moore,
0:15:11 > 0:15:16and he had to keep the relationship secret, too, from his father.
0:15:16 > 0:15:19That his father was financing not just one student
0:15:19 > 0:15:22but a family of three.
0:15:23 > 0:15:27Not only was the 20-year-old Lewis caring for Minto,
0:15:27 > 0:15:31but also for her daughter Maureen. He called Minto "Mother,"
0:15:31 > 0:15:35and became a de facto stepfather to Maureen,
0:15:35 > 0:15:37who was only eight years his junior.
0:15:37 > 0:15:40There was clearly some sort of relationship
0:15:40 > 0:15:42between Lewis and Mrs Moore
0:15:42 > 0:15:46which mingled maternal affection and romantic love.
0:15:46 > 0:15:49And I don't think we really understand that relationship
0:15:49 > 0:15:50completely.
0:15:50 > 0:15:54Mrs Moore, in effect, brought Lewis the stability, the affection,
0:15:54 > 0:15:58the family context, that Lewis felt he was missing,
0:15:58 > 0:16:00partly through the death of his mother,
0:16:00 > 0:16:04but also through the increasing alienation that was building up
0:16:04 > 0:16:06between himself and his father.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10- And living with a woman was a very dangerous thing to do.- Oh, yes.
0:16:10 > 0:16:14What Lewis did, in effect, was present Mrs Moore as his landlady.
0:16:14 > 0:16:17"The reason why I'm spending time in her house
0:16:17 > 0:16:20"is that I'm renting a room from her."
0:16:20 > 0:16:24And then, as things got more complex, he presented Mrs Moore as his mother.
0:16:28 > 0:16:32Kirkpatrick's training paid off, and by 1923,
0:16:32 > 0:16:35Lewis had a first in classics to his name,
0:16:35 > 0:16:38with another first in English literature for good measure.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42He was increasingly steeping himself in his childhood love
0:16:42 > 0:16:45of Norse mythology and everything medieval.
0:16:46 > 0:16:50And it was with the fellow-medievalist JRR Tolkien
0:16:50 > 0:16:54that Lewis formed the fellowship called the Inklings.
0:16:54 > 0:16:56They were a handful of chaps who shared an interest
0:16:56 > 0:17:00in academic debate, erudition and alcohol.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03The Eagle and Child pub, always known as the Bird and Baby,
0:17:03 > 0:17:06was their Oxford drinking den.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09Lewis and cronies used to assemble here on Tuesdays
0:17:09 > 0:17:11between twelve and one.
0:17:11 > 0:17:13The general idea was to down as much beer as possible
0:17:13 > 0:17:16before they ate lunch in their colleges.
0:17:16 > 0:17:18Lewis had no small talk.
0:17:18 > 0:17:20One of the friends once arrived with his broken arm in a sling -
0:17:20 > 0:17:23Lewis didn't say, "Oh, poor you, you've broken your arm,"
0:17:23 > 0:17:24it was straight into,
0:17:24 > 0:17:26"What does anybody here think of the Venerable Bede?
0:17:26 > 0:17:28"I've been rereading him, awfully good stuff."
0:17:28 > 0:17:31Dyson, the loudest member of the group, once said to me,
0:17:31 > 0:17:35"Anyone hearing us roar would assume we were talking bawdry.
0:17:35 > 0:17:38"In fact, we were discussing literature and theology."
0:17:42 > 0:17:48Lewis not only read the great poets, he's always dreamed of becoming one.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52He'd tried his hand at war poetry, unsuccessfully,
0:17:52 > 0:17:53and in 1926 he tried again,
0:17:53 > 0:17:57with what he hoped would be his great work.
0:17:57 > 0:18:00Dymer is a long, rambling narrative poem
0:18:00 > 0:18:05about the citizen of a totalitarian state who wanders into a forest,
0:18:05 > 0:18:07and there he meets a beautiful woman.
0:18:07 > 0:18:11Only, it turns out she isn't a woman, she's really a monster.
0:18:11 > 0:18:15Dymer and the woman-monster have congress,
0:18:15 > 0:18:17and she gives birth to a son,
0:18:17 > 0:18:22and when he grows up, he fights Dymer and kills him.
0:18:22 > 0:18:23How do I know?
0:18:23 > 0:18:26Not, unfortunately, because I've ever got to the end.
0:18:26 > 0:18:29When I wrote my own book about Lewis, I found his prose,
0:18:29 > 0:18:33whatever subject he addressed, electrifyingly readable.
0:18:33 > 0:18:36But his poetry - oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39And Dymer, I'm afraid, defeated me.
0:18:39 > 0:18:43Poor old Lewis, it took him ten years to write,
0:18:43 > 0:18:46and when it was published, it was such a flop.
0:18:46 > 0:18:51And ever afterwards he felt so resentful of the success
0:18:51 > 0:18:53and fame of his contemporary poets.
0:18:56 > 0:19:01Lewis was, however, a great success as a medieval scholar.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04His academic passion had paid off,
0:19:04 > 0:19:08and in 1925 he had been appointed a fellow of Magdalen College
0:19:08 > 0:19:10teaching English literature.
0:19:10 > 0:19:16The position came with a salary of £500 a year, rooms and dining.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19CS Lewis spent hours of his life in this wonderful place,
0:19:19 > 0:19:21Duke Humfrey's Library,
0:19:21 > 0:19:26reading and reading and reading primary texts.
0:19:26 > 0:19:29The great texts of English literature,
0:19:29 > 0:19:31Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton.
0:19:31 > 0:19:34That was the stuff that interested him.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37We tend to take it for granted that English literature
0:19:37 > 0:19:40is one of the main subjects studied in universities,
0:19:40 > 0:19:44but this was not the case when Lewis first got his job at Oxford.
0:19:44 > 0:19:46Indeed, there were many of the all-male colleges
0:19:46 > 0:19:48that didn't teach English at all.
0:19:48 > 0:19:50They thought of it as a girl's subject.
0:19:50 > 0:19:54Now, Tolkien and Lewis were very much of the opinion that
0:19:54 > 0:19:56English literature should have a sound, scholarly
0:19:56 > 0:19:58and, above all, historical base.
0:20:03 > 0:20:06Laura Ash, fellow of Worcester College Oxford,
0:20:06 > 0:20:08is a medievalist with an appreciation
0:20:08 > 0:20:11of the Irish man's contribution to the field.
0:20:11 > 0:20:15I think people forget how young English literature is as a subject.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18Lewis picked it up in a year after he'd done the real
0:20:18 > 0:20:20subject of classics.
0:20:20 > 0:20:22This was a time when people were staking out the ground.
0:20:22 > 0:20:24What's the point? Is this a technical subject
0:20:24 > 0:20:28or is it a subject about grand ideas of culture and the human?
0:20:28 > 0:20:32I think that is very clearly Lewis' approach.
0:20:32 > 0:20:34It's exhilarating reading his work.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37When you read something like The Allegory Of Love written in 1936,
0:20:37 > 0:20:41what he does is draw us into seeing the world in a new way.
0:20:41 > 0:20:44He says, "My own eyes are not enough for me.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46"I will see through the eyes of others.
0:20:46 > 0:20:48"And reality is not enough for me.
0:20:48 > 0:20:50"I will see what other men have invented."
0:20:52 > 0:20:55So what was it like having CS Lewis as your tutor?
0:20:55 > 0:20:59What was it like being taught by him in these rooms just above me here
0:20:59 > 0:21:02in New Buildings, Magdalen College?
0:21:02 > 0:21:05His nickname was Heavy Lewis and he could be a bit heavy.
0:21:05 > 0:21:07One of his pupils once said he couldn't see
0:21:07 > 0:21:11the point of Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum great epic poem.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14Lewis was so appalled, that he reached for his old
0:21:14 > 0:21:16regimental sword which was lying in the corner of the room
0:21:16 > 0:21:19and said, "The sword must settle this."
0:21:23 > 0:21:26But it wasn't all confrontation.
0:21:26 > 0:21:30When he first encountered his tutor, actor to be, Robert Hardy,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33was in uniform as he was when we met.
0:21:33 > 0:21:36Robert, I notice you're wearing a Magdalen College tie.
0:21:36 > 0:21:38Yes, I put it on for the occasion.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41- That was presumably where you met CS Lewis.- Yes, absolutely.
0:21:41 > 0:21:47I vividly remember going through the Porters' Lodge and there on the lawn,
0:21:47 > 0:21:54coming towards me, I saw a man and I thought, "Oh, it's a gardener."
0:21:54 > 0:21:57But he had a tie on, so I thought, he's the head gardener.
0:21:57 > 0:22:03Then immediately behind me, as he passed, he said, "Are you Hardy?"
0:22:03 > 0:22:05I admitted and he said,
0:22:05 > 0:22:07"Oh, well, there now, it's 11 o'clock
0:22:07 > 0:22:11"and I'm going to be five minutes late. I'm Lewis, by the way."
0:22:11 > 0:22:13I couldn't believe it.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16I was absolutely staggered at his appearance.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19From reading all the stuff that my tutor at school had told me
0:22:19 > 0:22:22to read, I'd got a picture of Lewis.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26It was an El Greco Jesuit.
0:22:27 > 0:22:32Thin, insistent, you know and rather frightening.
0:22:32 > 0:22:36- Probably pale and intense. - Pale and intense, absolutely.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40But my goodness me, there was this jolly farmer and I was absolutely
0:22:40 > 0:22:45in my element because I'm a country bumpkin, so I adored him ever after.
0:22:45 > 0:22:48- Did he entertain his pupils? - Oh, yes, he did.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50He gave wonderfully jolly
0:22:50 > 0:22:54and extraordinary parties with lots of booze.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58I can remember being hopelessly behind with an essay and I said,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02"Mr Lewis, I wonder, would it be possible, I'm supposed to be
0:23:02 > 0:23:05"reading my essay too tomorrow but I haven't quite finished it.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08"I wonder if I could come on Thursday."
0:23:08 > 0:23:13And he said, "No, no, no, don't bother about it for a second.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16"Come next Wednesday at the usual time
0:23:16 > 0:23:20"with an extra specially good essay.
0:23:20 > 0:23:25"The great thing about being at university, is to enjoy
0:23:25 > 0:23:27"yourself which I hope you are.
0:23:27 > 0:23:29"Besides, look at you in uniform,
0:23:29 > 0:23:32you'll be off soon and may well get killed.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34It's proper that you enjoy yourself."
0:23:34 > 0:23:36Which I thought was wonderful.
0:23:40 > 0:23:43Lewis was only a little older than his pupils
0:23:43 > 0:23:47but to those he took to, he seems to have been fatherly.
0:23:47 > 0:23:50His relations with his own father, however, were more difficult.
0:23:54 > 0:23:57In 1929, Albert Lewis was taken ill.
0:23:57 > 0:24:00His son was at an emotional crossroads.
0:24:00 > 0:24:04Lewis came home to Belfast to see his father.
0:24:04 > 0:24:08He and Albert had barely been in contact for a decade
0:24:08 > 0:24:11even though his father had supported him through his career.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18Lewis regarded his treatment of his father as the greatest
0:24:18 > 0:24:20sin of his life.
0:24:20 > 0:24:22But they were reconciled.
0:24:22 > 0:24:25When he realised Albert Lewis was dying,
0:24:25 > 0:24:29Jack came back to East Belfast and they had six golden weeks
0:24:29 > 0:24:33together in which the two men forged a friendship.
0:24:34 > 0:24:39Sadly, the Oxford term was about to begin and Lewis left.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43Four days later, after waving goodbye to his son,
0:24:43 > 0:24:44Albert Lewis died.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50Lewis returned here for his father's funeral
0:24:50 > 0:24:55and left this window, behind me, as a memorial to his parents.
0:24:59 > 0:25:03His father was, for Lewis, a symbol of a lost childhood.
0:25:03 > 0:25:05It wasn't so much his father he liked,
0:25:05 > 0:25:07it was much more what his father represented.
0:25:07 > 0:25:10One of the most moving parts of Lewis'
0:25:10 > 0:25:14correspondence, is his description of how after his father's death,
0:25:14 > 0:25:20he and his brother bury all their childhood toys in the ground,
0:25:20 > 0:25:23almost saying, let's get closure on this.
0:25:23 > 0:25:25This is the end of childhood.
0:25:29 > 0:25:34The Lewis boys drew a line and moved on, or did they?
0:25:34 > 0:25:38Jack Lewis had replaced his dead mother with a mother substitute.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42Albert's passing coincided with what might be
0:25:42 > 0:25:46seen as a process of finding a replacement father figure.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52Lewis had gone to the Western front, a devout atheist
0:25:52 > 0:25:56and returned with his convictions hardened.
0:25:56 > 0:26:00It was to be a slow process but at 30, he began to change.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05In the Trinity term of 1929,
0:26:05 > 0:26:12I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed,
0:26:12 > 0:26:14perhaps that night the most dejected
0:26:14 > 0:26:17and reluctant convert in all England.
0:26:20 > 0:26:24Lewis started to attend his college chapel here.
0:26:24 > 0:26:27This is his stall as a fellow of the college.
0:26:27 > 0:26:32But, of course, at this stage, he still simply believed in God.
0:26:32 > 0:26:36He hadn't advanced to the position of believing in Jesus Christ.
0:26:37 > 0:26:39He had not yet completed his journey.
0:26:44 > 0:26:49Lewis had been a modern man, someone who believed in the modern
0:26:49 > 0:26:53materialist philosophy, that the world is all there is,
0:26:53 > 0:26:57that we live in a world of matter and matter alone.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01Yet he hated being modern. He felt as though he'd been imprisoned.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06This is how he describes it in his autobiography.
0:27:06 > 0:27:10The odd thing was that before God closed in on me,
0:27:10 > 0:27:13I was in fact offered what now appears a moment
0:27:13 > 0:27:14of prolifically choice.
0:27:14 > 0:27:19I became aware I was holding something at bay or shutting
0:27:19 > 0:27:21something out or if you liked, I was wearing some stiff
0:27:21 > 0:27:27clothing like corsets or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30He felt he was being given the choice either to keep this
0:27:30 > 0:27:33suit of armour on or to discard it.
0:27:33 > 0:27:40He made the choice to discard the carapace of modern materialism.
0:27:40 > 0:27:45This rather weird experience, this liberation of Lewis' imagination
0:27:45 > 0:27:51occurred on the bus going home from Magdalen after a day's work
0:27:51 > 0:27:55to Headington and Mrs Moore.
0:27:57 > 0:28:02Lewis, the great medievalist and lover of ancient mythology,
0:28:02 > 0:28:05could see the attraction of Christianity
0:28:05 > 0:28:07but he could not yet believe it,
0:28:07 > 0:28:11until one very significant conversation
0:28:11 > 0:28:14with his close friend, JRR Tolkien.
0:28:26 > 0:28:30On the night of the 19th of September 1931, they were here
0:28:30 > 0:28:36with another friend, Hugo Dyson, on Addison's Walk in Magdalen College.
0:28:36 > 0:28:41As they walked, Dyson and Tolkien talked to Lewis about religion.
0:28:41 > 0:28:43They talked about myth.
0:28:43 > 0:28:45"How could it be," Lewis said,
0:28:45 > 0:28:49"that there are so many myths in the old world
0:28:49 > 0:28:52"in Egypt, Greece, the Nordic mythologies,
0:28:52 > 0:28:56"of a young man God dying and coming back to life?"
0:28:56 > 0:29:01Baldr, in the Nordic mythology, Adonis in Greece.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04How do you distinguish between that
0:29:04 > 0:29:07and Jesus Christ in the gospels who surely is a mythological
0:29:07 > 0:29:12figure who dies in order to rise and save us from our sins?
0:29:12 > 0:29:14Isn't that just a myth too?
0:29:14 > 0:29:17"Yes," said Tolkien. "Of course Christianity is a myth.
0:29:17 > 0:29:21"It just happens to be the one myth which is true."
0:29:31 > 0:29:35Tolkien, in particular, was able to show Lewis that Christianity
0:29:35 > 0:29:40was a story, a sense making story that grasped the imagination
0:29:40 > 0:29:42but this one was right.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46If this one was right, it positioned all other myths
0:29:46 > 0:29:50and Lewis suddenly realised this was the missing link, this enabled him to
0:29:50 > 0:29:54see how Christianity and literature connected up with each other.
0:30:10 > 0:30:12Lewis' central problem -
0:30:12 > 0:30:17how could the Christian myth be the only true one - was dealt with.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20All religions glimpse the wonder of God,
0:30:20 > 0:30:22but Christianity is the big picture.
0:30:24 > 0:30:28The moment of enlightenment happened not on the road to Damascus,
0:30:28 > 0:30:31but on the B489 to Dunstable.
0:30:31 > 0:30:34They were having a family outing to Whipsnade Zoo.
0:30:34 > 0:30:37Maureen, Minto, Warnie and Jack.
0:30:37 > 0:30:40Lewis tells us that when they set out on that journey,
0:30:40 > 0:30:43he didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46By the time they'd arrived at Whipsnade, he did.
0:30:50 > 0:30:55Still committed to life at home looking after Minto and Maureen,
0:30:55 > 0:30:58Lewis was now a full convert to Christianity.
0:30:58 > 0:31:01He saw it his duty to explain his new faith
0:31:01 > 0:31:04and began to write as a Christian apologist.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09The Screwtape Letters, about human temptation,
0:31:09 > 0:31:13describe how one senior devil instructs a junior devil.
0:31:13 > 0:31:18And The Problem Of Pain written in 1940 tries to explain
0:31:18 > 0:31:21how a loving God can allow us to suffer.
0:31:21 > 0:31:23EXPLOSION
0:31:29 > 0:31:33In summer 1940, France fell, and in September,
0:31:33 > 0:31:37the aerial bombardment of Britain's population began.
0:31:37 > 0:31:40Lewis' writings chimed with hard times
0:31:40 > 0:31:44and his apologetics were inspirational fireside reading.
0:31:44 > 0:31:46But radio was the medium of the age,
0:31:46 > 0:31:50and the best means of broadcasting Lewis' words of comfort.
0:31:50 > 0:31:55'Almost certainly, God is not in Time.
0:31:55 > 0:32:01'He has infinity in which to listen to the split-second of prayer
0:32:01 > 0:32:06'put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.'
0:32:06 > 0:32:11At the beginning of the Second World War, the BBC asked Lewis to
0:32:11 > 0:32:16give broadcast talks, a defence of the Christian religion.
0:32:16 > 0:32:18They had an immense effect.
0:32:18 > 0:32:23Many people regarded Lewis as the greatest broadcaster of the war.
0:32:23 > 0:32:26Many placed him above Churchill himself.
0:32:26 > 0:32:29'God has infinite attention.
0:32:29 > 0:32:34'You're as much alone with him as if you were the only thing
0:32:34 > 0:32:36'he'd ever created.'
0:32:39 > 0:32:43In 1952, Lewis published a version of his wartime talks.
0:32:43 > 0:32:46The book has never been out of print.
0:32:46 > 0:32:49Mere Christianity is one of his most popular books.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53One of the great strengths of Lewis' wartime talks
0:32:53 > 0:32:56is the way in which he's able to use language
0:32:56 > 0:32:59which really resonates with his audience.
0:32:59 > 0:33:04He tells stories, he uses analogies, he speaks in a very accessible way.
0:33:04 > 0:33:09One person was described it as a port wine and plum pudding voice.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13But there's an intellectual content to what Lewis is saying as well.
0:33:13 > 0:33:16It's not, "Here are very good reasons for believing in God,"
0:33:16 > 0:33:20it's much more, "Look, if there were a god,
0:33:20 > 0:33:23"doesn't that make a lot of sense of what we experience within us
0:33:23 > 0:33:25"and observe around us?"
0:33:30 > 0:33:33The wartime broadcasts made him a star at home
0:33:33 > 0:33:36and the publication in 1942 of The Screwtape Letters
0:33:36 > 0:33:39made him an American celebrity.
0:33:39 > 0:33:43But by an irony, his ability to popularise theological ideas
0:33:43 > 0:33:48made him hated in the one place that really mattered to him - Oxford.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56Seen from the outside, at 44, Lewis was in his prime.
0:33:56 > 0:33:59But the Oxford academics weren't so impressed.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02What was an English don doing writing popular theology?
0:34:04 > 0:34:06Lewis was a spellbinding lecturer.
0:34:06 > 0:34:09So popular, they found it difficult to get lecture halls large enough
0:34:09 > 0:34:11to accommodate his audiences.
0:34:11 > 0:34:13He was by far the most distinguished member
0:34:13 > 0:34:15of the Oxford English faculty and yet,
0:34:15 > 0:34:19when it came to getting professorships and promotion,
0:34:19 > 0:34:21he was always passed over. Why?
0:34:21 > 0:34:26Because the mean-spirited Oxford dons resented his popularity.
0:34:26 > 0:34:30Also, in post-war Oxford, Christianity was hated
0:34:30 > 0:34:35and Lewis was really a martyr for his faith, much to Oxford's shame.
0:34:37 > 0:34:39'And when it came to finding relief,
0:34:39 > 0:34:42'there wasn't so much at home, either.'
0:34:43 > 0:34:48Since 1930, Lewis and his brother had shared this house,
0:34:48 > 0:34:51The Kilns, with Minto and Maureen Moore.
0:34:51 > 0:34:54Today, the place is a shrine presided over
0:34:54 > 0:34:57by acolytes like Deborah Higgins.
0:34:57 > 0:34:59Welcome to The Kilns.
0:34:59 > 0:35:02- Thank you very much indeed.- Yes, come into the common room.- Wonderful.
0:35:02 > 0:35:05This is where Lewis would've received you.
0:35:05 > 0:35:08It's also where Lewis did some writing.
0:35:08 > 0:35:11There was a desk under the window just like this one.
0:35:11 > 0:35:13- There he is.- Yes.
0:35:13 > 0:35:17- He did have bookcases on either side of the fireplace.- Lovely.
0:35:17 > 0:35:19He owned over 3,000 books himself,
0:35:19 > 0:35:22and then also have the map here of Narnia.
0:35:22 > 0:35:26- A very lovely thing to have. - Yes, it is. It's beautiful.
0:35:26 > 0:35:30This typewriter is our only original artefact from the two brothers
0:35:30 > 0:35:32and it's Major Warren Lewis' typewriter.
0:35:32 > 0:35:35- It was on this very machine that he typed?- Yes.
0:35:35 > 0:35:37He said in his diary he typed over 12,000
0:35:37 > 0:35:39of Lewis' fan mail letters.
0:35:39 > 0:35:44- Let's take a look upstairs. - Certainly.- There's three bedrooms.
0:35:44 > 0:35:46That was Maureen's room...
0:35:46 > 0:35:50this one, which was Mrs Moore's room, and then this one which was
0:35:50 > 0:35:53CS Lewis' bedroom, so a very frugal room.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55They probably only had about two fires
0:35:55 > 0:35:57that were ever lit in the house. One...
0:35:57 > 0:36:00- Yes, there's often a picture of him wearing a thick dressing gown.- Yes.
0:36:00 > 0:36:03In CS Lewis' letters, he writes someone and tells them that he
0:36:03 > 0:36:06reached out to get a cup of water and the water was frozen.
0:36:09 > 0:36:11Conditions were wintry, all right.
0:36:11 > 0:36:16By the end of the war, Minto was 73 and her health was deteriorating.
0:36:16 > 0:36:20Warnie, now an alcoholic, increasingly depended on Jack.
0:36:22 > 0:36:25Lewis' faith might have been holding him together at home,
0:36:25 > 0:36:28but his confidence was seriously shaken
0:36:28 > 0:36:30one February evening in 1948.
0:36:32 > 0:36:36The Socratic Society was a Christian debating club.
0:36:36 > 0:36:39CS Lewis often came to debate the philosophical implications of
0:36:39 > 0:36:45Christianity or how these religious ideas impacted on society at large.
0:36:45 > 0:36:48He must have looked forward to one of his debating evenings
0:36:48 > 0:36:52in which the cut and thrust of the famous Lewis
0:36:52 > 0:36:56was on display and his opponents were all over the floor.
0:36:56 > 0:36:58How wrong he was.
0:37:01 > 0:37:05Sir Anthony Kenny was a priest before he became a philosopher.
0:37:05 > 0:37:08He knew Lewis' debating opponent well,
0:37:08 > 0:37:11an immensely gifted scholar named Elizabeth Anscombe.
0:37:11 > 0:37:14As a philosopher, she would become legendary,
0:37:14 > 0:37:16as would her encounter with Lewis.
0:37:18 > 0:37:21Lewis had published a book called Miracles
0:37:21 > 0:37:28in which he maintained that if everything that we say and think
0:37:28 > 0:37:33is the result of purely mechanical processes in our brain,
0:37:33 > 0:37:35then there can't be any value,
0:37:35 > 0:37:39there can't be any truth, nothing can be either true or false.
0:37:39 > 0:37:45And Anscombe refuted this with a rather simple argument.
0:37:45 > 0:37:50She said, "Suppose I stand on one of those weighing machines
0:37:50 > 0:37:52"that say, 'I speak your weight.'
0:37:52 > 0:37:58"And it says to me, 'You weigh 15 stone', that is true
0:37:58 > 0:38:01"even though it is produced by totally mechanical means."
0:38:01 > 0:38:05And this simple argument did really undercut Lewis' position.
0:38:05 > 0:38:08It's a paradox, isn't it? Because a lot of people
0:38:08 > 0:38:12saw it as a conflict between the Christian Lewis
0:38:12 > 0:38:15and this bright, sparky, young woman but in fact she was
0:38:15 > 0:38:17fervently Christian as well.
0:38:17 > 0:38:19Yes, she was a very devout Roman Catholic.
0:38:19 > 0:38:22That was what particularly wounded Lewis,
0:38:22 > 0:38:27he felt they should have been allies fighting side-by-side
0:38:27 > 0:38:30in the battle against naturalism and secularism.
0:38:30 > 0:38:34And here he was, brought down by friendly fire.
0:38:37 > 0:38:41After the Anscombe debate, Lewis felt humiliated.
0:38:41 > 0:38:44I remember Dyson telling me that he'd come back to the pub,
0:38:44 > 0:38:47Lewis, and he put his head in his hands and said,
0:38:47 > 0:38:50"I've been utterly crushed, I've been humiliated."
0:38:50 > 0:38:56And he wrote afterwards that he'd been obliterated as an apologist.
0:38:56 > 0:38:59And it's very striking that after that moment,
0:38:59 > 0:39:01Lewis wrote no more Christian apologetics
0:39:01 > 0:39:04aimed at converting unbelievers.
0:39:04 > 0:39:08He'd already written a highly successful space trilogy
0:39:08 > 0:39:10and he'd been dabbling with the idea of children's stories,
0:39:10 > 0:39:14but it's surely no accident that after his humiliation
0:39:14 > 0:39:17in a philosophical debate in Oxford,
0:39:17 > 0:39:20he turned to the world beyond the wardrobe.
0:39:27 > 0:39:30Even before they were adapted for television in 1988,
0:39:30 > 0:39:35the Narnia books had made CS Lewis a household name all over the world.
0:39:46 > 0:39:50The four children in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
0:39:50 > 0:39:54go to stay in the house of a Professor Kirke, who bears more than a passing resemblance
0:39:54 > 0:39:58to Kirkpatrick, Lewis' old tutor.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01They find at top of his house a magic wardrobe,
0:40:01 > 0:40:05when they pass through it they've entered the land of Narnia.
0:40:05 > 0:40:08When the professor discovers that they've had this experience,
0:40:08 > 0:40:11he's amazed that they haven't related it
0:40:11 > 0:40:13to reading the philosopher Plato.
0:40:13 > 0:40:16Plato who believed that this world
0:40:16 > 0:40:19was but the shadow of a real world beyond.
0:40:19 > 0:40:23In another way you could say the Narnia stories
0:40:23 > 0:40:27were an enactment of that great conversation he had with Tolkien
0:40:27 > 0:40:31about a myth which happened to be true.
0:40:31 > 0:40:34This magical world of Narnia
0:40:34 > 0:40:37was a work of Lewis' imagination,
0:40:37 > 0:40:41but it's easy to see the influences of the landscape
0:40:41 > 0:40:43that Jack and Warnie grew up in,
0:40:43 > 0:40:49of northerness, thin light and remnants of a land beyond.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53Almost the first physical contact that Lewis had with the Middle Ages
0:40:53 > 0:40:57must have been in the ruined castles of Northern Ireland,
0:40:57 > 0:40:59where he had holidays with his mother.
0:40:59 > 0:41:03Just up the bay from here, Dunluce Castle,
0:41:03 > 0:41:10which many people think is the model for Cair Paravel the castle in Narnia.
0:41:10 > 0:41:14At the end of the Narnia stories in The Last Battle,
0:41:14 > 0:41:18Cair Paravel is besieged and it seems as though everything is lost
0:41:18 > 0:41:20and the children believe
0:41:20 > 0:41:23that the forces of good have been defeated.
0:41:23 > 0:41:27But they learn that everything they've loved in this life
0:41:27 > 0:41:31has actually been preserved for them.
0:41:31 > 0:41:34A very potent image by Lewis.
0:41:35 > 0:41:37A feeling that all his longings
0:41:37 > 0:41:41and all the things he's loved and lost in this life
0:41:41 > 0:41:45will, in fact, be kept and preserved.
0:41:48 > 0:41:53As with the buried childhood toys in the garden of Little Lea,
0:41:53 > 0:41:57Lewis clung onto the hope that the love he had for his lost mother
0:41:57 > 0:42:01would in some way be saved, unspoiled by separation.
0:42:03 > 0:42:07The Narnia Chronicles come straight from the heart
0:42:07 > 0:42:09and it is in these adventures we see most clearly
0:42:09 > 0:42:14the combination of Lewis the Christian and Lewis the medievalist.
0:42:14 > 0:42:18I think what he was doing with the whole world of Narnia
0:42:18 > 0:42:22was developing a world which makes symbolism true.
0:42:22 > 0:42:26Whether or not you think our real world is symbolic of a higher reality,
0:42:26 > 0:42:30it's very clear that Lewis' invented Narnian world
0:42:30 > 0:42:34is symbolic of some higher reality that he was reaching toward.
0:42:34 > 0:42:40I mean, when you have for example Aslan the lion giving up his life as he lies on the slab,
0:42:40 > 0:42:44- it's a symbol of Christ's atoning sacrifice.- Right, exactly.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48What we suddenly get is an access of really sharp medieval theology,
0:42:48 > 0:42:54because we have Aslan explain when he's resurrected...explain to the children
0:42:54 > 0:42:57that what he's done is play a trick on the evil queen,
0:42:57 > 0:43:04whereby she has been tricked into sacrificing an innocent who had no guilt
0:43:04 > 0:43:10in the place of someone else who was guilty and therefore the magic is broken, death is overturned.
0:43:10 > 0:43:15- Now that is absolutely the theory of Christ's crucifixion in the Middle Ages.- Hmm.
0:43:15 > 0:43:19And there it is set out in the middle of this children's book.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25Lewis had no children of his own.
0:43:25 > 0:43:27He'd started his relationship with Mrs Moore
0:43:27 > 0:43:30when he was 19 and she was 45,
0:43:30 > 0:43:33so even if they'd married they could hardly have had children.
0:43:33 > 0:43:37But she had children and she was a very motherly type and, indeed,
0:43:37 > 0:43:41adopted in an informal way quite a lot of children over the years.
0:43:41 > 0:43:45And when war came this house, The Kilns,
0:43:45 > 0:43:47filled up with evacuee children.
0:43:49 > 0:43:55Amongst them a Londoner named June Flewett, who in 1942 joined them as an evacuee.
0:43:55 > 0:43:58She would grow up to become actress Jill Raymond,
0:43:58 > 0:44:01then wife of MP Clement Freud.
0:44:01 > 0:44:04She adored Lewis' books,
0:44:04 > 0:44:09but at first Jill had no idea who the tweedy owner of The Kilns was.
0:44:09 > 0:44:11I'd been there two or three days which he arrived
0:44:11 > 0:44:17and I was in the kitchen and Mrs Moore said, "Oh, here's Jack."
0:44:17 > 0:44:21I was able to chat him quite happily as a 16-year-old girl
0:44:21 > 0:44:26until a few days later when I looked at the book shelves
0:44:26 > 0:44:30and saw all these books by CS Lewis.
0:44:30 > 0:44:34He was my hero but I had no idea that it was Jack.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38Certainly, I should think for nearly a week,
0:44:38 > 0:44:42I was unable to look at him, to speak to him.
0:44:42 > 0:44:44- I felt- so- shy. - HE LAUGHS
0:44:44 > 0:44:48I just thought he was wonderful, which he was.
0:44:48 > 0:44:51- Jack was an extremely kind man to you personally.- Oh...
0:44:51 > 0:44:55he was...the kindest person.
0:44:55 > 0:44:59I mean, when I left, he paid my fees
0:44:59 > 0:45:02at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for two years.
0:45:02 > 0:45:06I could never have had that training without him.
0:45:06 > 0:45:11He changed my life, because he allowed me to become a professional actress.
0:45:11 > 0:45:16Jill is possibly the only person surviving who knew Minto
0:45:16 > 0:45:20and who witnessed the relationship between her and Jack.
0:45:20 > 0:45:25It was the most loving...gentle,
0:45:25 > 0:45:28kind relationship between the two of them.
0:45:28 > 0:45:34More visibly from his side, because she was...she was a feisty lady
0:45:34 > 0:45:38and I don't think she showed her emotions very easily.
0:45:38 > 0:45:40When I got there, I found
0:45:40 > 0:45:45that she had open varicose ulcers on her legs.
0:45:45 > 0:45:51But Jack was so gentle with her and so kind and so loving and always...
0:45:51 > 0:45:57looking after her and trying to do the best for her that he could.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02Lewis was a man with a strong desire to change lives for the better,
0:46:02 > 0:46:06but there was one person he couldn't much help.
0:46:06 > 0:46:11Minto, his first love, had been there for Jack for 33 years,
0:46:11 > 0:46:17but she was suffering from dementia and he was fretted by two worries,
0:46:17 > 0:46:22the illness itself and having to find £500 a year
0:46:22 > 0:46:24to pay for her care.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28And then in January 1951,
0:46:28 > 0:46:34the worry was taken from him, dear old Minto died.
0:46:38 > 0:46:43The death of the second woman he had so loved must have reminded him of the first,
0:46:43 > 0:46:46of his mother whom he lost at the tender age of nine.
0:46:46 > 0:46:50A time when he felt so terribly alone.
0:46:53 > 0:46:56In 1954, the University of Cambridge
0:46:56 > 0:47:02offered its first chair of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature to Lewis.
0:47:02 > 0:47:07It was a post tailor-made and designed with him in mind.
0:47:07 > 0:47:08His Allegory of Love
0:47:08 > 0:47:13was the standard text on courtly love and he'd just completed
0:47:13 > 0:47:16his impressive volume on 16th-century literature.
0:47:16 > 0:47:23It's astonishing then that when Cambridge offered him the job, he declined it...twice.
0:47:23 > 0:47:26His reasons were entirely emotional.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30Lewis believed when Cambridge offered him this job
0:47:30 > 0:47:34that he'd have to come for the whole term, eight weeks and more,
0:47:34 > 0:47:38so be away from Oxford for the best part of two or three months.
0:47:38 > 0:47:41And this was something he felt he just couldn't do.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44Partly he loved the pubs and his friends at Oxford,
0:47:44 > 0:47:47but the real reason was Warnie.
0:47:47 > 0:47:52He was the only person who'd really care for Warnie when Warnie was in the grip of alcoholism.
0:47:52 > 0:47:56Obviously, Jack couldn't explain that to Cambridge,
0:47:56 > 0:47:59but Professor Tolkien was the hero of the hour,
0:47:59 > 0:48:03he told Cambridge that Lewis was frightened of leaving Oxford for such a long time
0:48:03 > 0:48:06and they said, "Of course, you can commute."
0:48:06 > 0:48:10After he learnt that, Lewis accepted the job.
0:48:19 > 0:48:22Lewis immediately liked Cambridge
0:48:22 > 0:48:26and, unlike Oxford, Cambridge liked him.
0:48:26 > 0:48:31Lewis decided the fenland town was smaller, softer
0:48:31 > 0:48:33and more old-fashioned.
0:48:33 > 0:48:37Jack gave his first lecture on his 56th birthday,
0:48:37 > 0:48:4029th of November. 1954.
0:48:40 > 0:48:44The move to a new university made the headlines,
0:48:44 > 0:48:47the BBC even considered doing a live broadcast
0:48:47 > 0:48:51of a lecture which promised to be an absolute corker.
0:48:52 > 0:48:55Lewis presented to an appreciative audience
0:48:55 > 0:49:00not an argument but a man, himself.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03The Old World from classical times to the 19th century
0:49:03 > 0:49:09was all essentially the same, then came machines and atheism.
0:49:09 > 0:49:16Lewis wasn't part of the modern, unbelieving, technologically advancing world.
0:49:16 > 0:49:20He was prehistoric and glad of it.
0:49:20 > 0:49:24He ended his lecture by telling his Cambridge audience
0:49:24 > 0:49:28that what they'd hired was an example of "Old Western Man".
0:49:28 > 0:49:32He was selling himself as a kind of intellectual dinosaur
0:49:32 > 0:49:34It was rather an absurd claim since he belonged
0:49:34 > 0:49:37to the same generation as the people to whom he was speaking.
0:49:37 > 0:49:43What I suppose he meant was he was a modern man who simply hated being modern.
0:49:43 > 0:49:46But it made wonderful theatre.
0:49:50 > 0:49:54'Speaking not for myself but for all other western men,
0:49:54 > 0:49:57'old western men whom you may meet,
0:49:57 > 0:50:01'I would say use your specimens while you can...
0:50:01 > 0:50:05'there aren't going to be very many more dinosaurs.'
0:50:10 > 0:50:13Despite Lewis' insistence that he firmly belonged in the past,
0:50:13 > 0:50:16it looked as though he would last for ever.
0:50:16 > 0:50:21He had 13 more books in him and more than 40 articles and papers.
0:50:21 > 0:50:24The Four Loves in 1960, was the mature reflections
0:50:24 > 0:50:29of a man who could look back on a lifetime of relationships.
0:50:30 > 0:50:35With the wartime publication in the United States of The Screwtape Letters,
0:50:35 > 0:50:38Lewis had become internationally famous.
0:50:38 > 0:50:41With that fame came a vast correspondence,
0:50:41 > 0:50:44particularly American.
0:50:44 > 0:50:47Lewis made a point of replying to everyone.
0:50:47 > 0:50:51He had hundreds of pen friends.
0:50:51 > 0:50:56And one August day in 1952 found him in this hotel, The Eastgate,
0:50:56 > 0:50:59awaiting a meeting with one of those pen friends.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02He'd never met her, she was an American woman,
0:51:02 > 0:51:06and they'd agreed to meet here for a cup of tea and a chat.
0:51:10 > 0:51:15Joy Davidman was a former Communist and aspiring writer,
0:51:15 > 0:51:19married but very unhappily with two sons.
0:51:19 > 0:51:24She was 16 years younger than Jack Lewis and fell in love with him
0:51:24 > 0:51:25or with the idea of him.
0:51:27 > 0:51:31Douglas Gresham was the younger of Joy's two sons,
0:51:31 > 0:51:36he and his brother David would eventually become Jack's stepsons.
0:51:36 > 0:51:41He had never before met a mind quite so active and quite so broadly educated as hers.
0:51:41 > 0:51:46- Really?- Absolutely. She was actually more widely read than he was.
0:51:46 > 0:51:48Jack had read everything in Europe,
0:51:48 > 0:51:52but my mother had read everything in Europe and everything in America as well.
0:51:52 > 0:51:56- Do you think at that stage they were friends really rather than...?- Very good friends indeed.
0:51:56 > 0:52:01- And, of course, she'd been communicating with Jack by mail for some years.- Oh, she had?
0:52:01 > 0:52:04- Yes, indeed.- And, of course, she was divorced?- Yes.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07The Foreign Office had said that they were not going to renew her visitor's visa.
0:52:07 > 0:52:08Jack very charitably said,
0:52:08 > 0:52:13"Well, look, the answer to this if you're so insistent you really, really want to stay in England,
0:52:13 > 0:52:17I'd rather you did, why don't we have a civil marriage ceremony?" It was his idea.
0:52:17 > 0:52:21- But it wasn't the marriage of love at that stage?- No, it wasn't.
0:52:21 > 0:52:23I think that didn't happen till quite sometime later.
0:52:27 > 0:52:31Lewis called his autobiography Surprised By Joy
0:52:31 > 0:52:34and now he really was surprised by a person called Joy
0:52:34 > 0:52:36and so were his friends.
0:52:36 > 0:52:41Bachelor Lewis had now become the stepfather of two little boys
0:52:41 > 0:52:44and the fusty old Kilns was being knocked into shape
0:52:44 > 0:52:47by an energetic American woman.
0:52:47 > 0:52:54But it wasn't to be long before everything turned to catastrophe.
0:52:54 > 0:52:57The telephone rang. And she'd been in pain
0:52:57 > 0:53:00with what was diagnosed as sciatica and things like that for some time.
0:53:00 > 0:53:03Quite a large amount of pain and she went to answer the telephone,
0:53:03 > 0:53:06tripped and snapped her thigh bone.
0:53:06 > 0:53:09She was taken off to hospital and found to be suffering from
0:53:09 > 0:53:11what they thought was going to be very shortly terminal cancer.
0:53:11 > 0:53:15I was taken to the hospital having come back from school
0:53:15 > 0:53:17to be told that my mother was dying.
0:53:17 > 0:53:21And I was ten years old and I knew no other human being in the world
0:53:21 > 0:53:23really to relate to other than my mother.
0:53:23 > 0:53:28She was expected to die within days or weeks and not to live any longer than that.
0:53:29 > 0:53:31Jack had been here before.
0:53:31 > 0:53:36Both women closest to him he had loved and lost
0:53:36 > 0:53:39and memories must have rushed back,
0:53:39 > 0:53:42but with them...something new.
0:53:42 > 0:53:48The agonies of a woman he'd married as a favour seem to have inspired something deeper.
0:53:48 > 0:53:55He wrote to his friend Dorothy L Sayers, "We soon learn to love what we know we must lose."
0:53:55 > 0:53:59Joy might not have long and he needed to act fast.
0:53:59 > 0:54:03He asked a pupil of his now a priest named Peter Bide
0:54:03 > 0:54:07for a bedside marriage, this time with a Christian ceremony.
0:54:07 > 0:54:12Peter Bide said, "What else could I do? The woman was dying! Lewis clearly loved her."
0:54:12 > 0:54:16Peter Bide had had a history of...healing.
0:54:16 > 0:54:19I think Lewis felt that that actually happened,
0:54:19 > 0:54:22because Joy went into remission shortly afterwards.
0:54:22 > 0:54:28And Lewis and Joy seemed to have enjoyed at least some time of relative happiness
0:54:28 > 0:54:31before, unfortunately, the cancer came back.
0:54:35 > 0:54:41In July 1960, Joy Lewis died at home with her husband at her bedside.
0:54:41 > 0:54:45He was plunged into despair, left doubting the very God
0:54:45 > 0:54:51he'd spent so many years explaining, championing, defending, believing.
0:54:51 > 0:54:55He had held on to his faith when Minto died,
0:54:55 > 0:54:57now Lewis felt abandoned.
0:54:57 > 0:55:02His crisis of faith would be the last great turmoil of his life.
0:55:02 > 0:55:07"No-one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
0:55:07 > 0:55:11They're the opening words of A Grief Observed.
0:55:11 > 0:55:15And the manuscript is preserved here in the Bodleian library.
0:55:15 > 0:55:19It's an intensely moving thing looking at this manuscript.
0:55:19 > 0:55:24It's written almost without correction, only 34 pages,
0:55:24 > 0:55:28every one of which is so raw, so grief-stricken,
0:55:28 > 0:55:31so full of pain, so honest.
0:55:31 > 0:55:37And I think that's why it made such an enormous impact on so many different readers.
0:55:37 > 0:55:39Whether you're contemplating your own death,
0:55:39 > 0:55:44or whether you're in the hideous agony of grieving for somebody you love,
0:55:44 > 0:55:47this is a book which speaks to you.
0:55:49 > 0:55:52Do you think he lost his faith after she died?
0:55:52 > 0:55:54I don't think Lewis lost his faith,
0:55:54 > 0:55:58I think it went through a period of recalibration.
0:55:58 > 0:56:03I think that Lewis began to realise that simplistic rationalisations of faith
0:56:03 > 0:56:05actually had their limits,
0:56:05 > 0:56:09and there were certain things that couldn't quite be put in those simple categories
0:56:09 > 0:56:12he'd used earlier in this career.
0:56:12 > 0:56:17Many would say that A Grief Observed is a much more mature and wise and raw book
0:56:17 > 0:56:21than the simple rationalist argument of A Problem Of Pain.
0:56:28 > 0:56:30BIRDSONG
0:56:31 > 0:56:36Jack joined Joy and Minto just three years later,
0:56:36 > 0:56:42dying from prostate cancer only seven days short of his 65th birthday
0:56:42 > 0:56:45on the 22nd November, 1963.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52On that bleak, raw November day
0:56:52 > 0:56:55almost nobody came to the burial.
0:56:55 > 0:56:58Warnie had taken to his bed,
0:56:58 > 0:57:02too drunk to tell anybody the time of the funeral.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07And in the world at large, in the newspaper, on the wireless,
0:57:07 > 0:57:09Jack's death was overshadowed
0:57:09 > 0:57:13by the news of President Kennedy's assassination on the very same day
0:57:13 > 0:57:15and the passing of Aldous Huxley.
0:57:15 > 0:57:21So his death like so much in CS Lewis' life...
0:57:21 > 0:57:24was almost a secret.
0:57:43 > 0:57:47In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
0:57:47 > 0:57:50- ALL:- Amen.
0:57:59 > 0:58:04Lewis set himself up as an intellectual at war with his own times,
0:58:04 > 0:58:06but he wasn't really an intellectual,
0:58:06 > 0:58:10he was always a man guided by his heart rather than by his head.
0:58:10 > 0:58:16In fact, he had the temperament of a poet even though he couldn't write poetry
0:58:16 > 0:58:23And although he was a man who lived his life in an exclusive male world of colleges,
0:58:23 > 0:58:30that life was punctuated by the loss of the three women he loved.
0:58:30 > 0:58:33Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd