16 Mar CS Lewis
CS Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1898. He grew up in Ireland but moved to England in 1916 to attend University College, Oxford. After serving in the First World War, he returned to Oxford and completed his studies. In 1925 Lewis became a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he taught for the next 29 years. Lewis might best be remembered today for the children’s stories The Chronicles of Narnia (three volumes, 1950-56) which were successfully adapted as Disney movies (2005-10).
In 1956 Lewis married the American writer Joy Davidman (aka Joy Gresham) who died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Their remarkable relationship is the focus of Richard Attenborough’s marvelous movie Shadowlands (1993) which starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. Lewis died in Oxford in 1963, just one week before his 65th birthday, and he’s buried in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church in nearby Headington. There’s a memorial stone in Poets’ Corner in London’s Westminster Abbey.