by A. N. Wilson
Warren, Sir Herbert, 89
Waugh, Evelyn, 71, 134; Decline and Fall, 16; Put Out More Flags, 186
Webb, C. C.J., 102
‘Weight of Glory, The’ (CSL; sermon), 174
Wheaton College, Illinois, xii-xiii, xv, 303–5, 309
Whipsnade Zoo, 127
Whitelock, Dorothy, 275
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 168
Williams, Charles: in CSL’s Oxford circle, 71; and CSL’s Allegory of Love, 147, 149–50; influence, 148, 194; qualities, 148–51,193–4; in Oxford during World War II, 170–1, 193; and CSL’s That Hideous Strength, 189–90; CSL’s devotion to, 193, 272; and idea of Substitution, 194, 269, 309; death, 204, 207; introduces Eliot and CSL, 286; All Hallows Eve, 194; The Figure of Beatrice, 193, 202; The Place of the Lion, 149–51
Williams, T. M.: portrait of CSL, xiv
Wilson, F. P., 82, 88, 103, 208, 241, 246
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 86, 166, 212–13, 276, 285, 305; Tractatus, 212
Wood, Dr William Rutherford, 142
Woolf, Virginia, 78, 125, 141, 161
Wordsworth, William, 135, 291; The Prelude, 251, 290
Wyld, H. C, 76
Wyllie, Basil, 63
Wynyard House (school, near Watford), 15–16, 19, 21–4
Yeats, William Butler, 35, 47–8, 70–1, 83, 190, 291
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce extracts from copyright material in this book. All works listed are by C. S. Lewis unless otherwise indicated, and are copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd. (W) denotes that world permission has been obtained from the source given.
In the United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press: The Discarded Image, An Experiment in Criticism, Studies in Words (W) © Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission
Faber & Faber Ltd: ‘Little Gidding’ from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot (W)
The John Betjeman Estate: Summoned by Bells, ‘Original Sin on the Sussex Coast’ from Collected Poems, both by John Betjeman (W) © John Betjeman by permission of The Estate of John Betjeman
Oxford University Press: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’ (W). By Permission of Oxford University Press
Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs: the letters of Mrs Moore (W)
Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien Estate: the unpublished papers of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (edited by Humphrey Carpenter)(W)
In the United States:
Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Illinois: the unpublished diaries of W. H. Lewis (W) Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (W) © The Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton Illinois
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright owners of material quoted in this book. If in any instance this has not proved possible, we offer our apologies to those concerned.
About the Author
C.S. Lewis was a brilliant, prolific writer and a deeply complex man, capable of inspiring both great devotion and great hostility. This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the clever child from the ‘Little End Room’ of his Ulster childhood to Oxford and adult life, exploring Lewis’s unwilling conversion to Christianity, the genesis of his writing, and the web of his relationships.
A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. He was a lecturer at St Hugh’s College and New College from 1976 to 1981, and was then appointed Literary Editor of the Spectator. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1981. His novels include The Sweets of Pimlico (John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), The Healing Art (Somerset Maugham Award), Wise Virgin (W.H. Smith Literary Award), Incline Our Hearts and A Bottle in the Smoke. He is the author of biographies of Walter Scott, Milton, Hilaire Belloc and Tolstoy (Whitbread Award).
Sources
C. S. Lewis tended to throw away the manuscripts of his books once they had been published. Most surviving Lewis manuscripts, however, both of his literary productions and of his letters, are preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where it is also possible to read photocopies or microfiches of Lewis holdings from other libraries. I am very grateful to the staff of the Bodleian for all the help which they have given me, and in particular to Dennis Porter and Judith Priestman from the Department of Western Manuscripts who guided me through the material. The papers and letters belonging to the late Major Warren Lewis (‘Warnie’) were bequeathed to the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois. These include the monumental family history compiled by Major Lewis in eleven volumes and entitled the Lewis Papers; many of C. S. Lewis’s letters, including the very important correspondence with Arthur Greeves, and the letters C. S. Lewis wrote to his brother; and Major Lewis’s Diary, some of which has been published as Brothers and Friends (see Bibliography), and the rest of which I have been able to read at Wheaton. I am indebted to the Curator of the Marion E. Wade Center, Lyle W. Dorsett, for his graciousness at the time of my visit, and for the help of his staff in showing me their collection of Lewis memorabilia, as well as for the opportunity to read the transcripts of interviews between Lyle W. Dorsett and some of those who knew C. S. Lewis.
I wrote this book at the suggestion of Sarah Baird-Smith, at that time an editor at Collins, and of Walter Hooper, the literary adviser to the C. S. Lewis estate. I am very grateful to them both for the trust which this invitation implied, and for the help which they have both given me. Elizabeth Stevens, at Curtis Brown Ltd, Lewis’s literary agents, has also been kind and helpful.
I am greatly indebted to all those who, over the years, have shared their memories of C. S. Lewis with me, either as a friend, a teacher, or a figure on the horizon. In particular, I should thank Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs (née Maureen Moore) and her husband Leonard Blake for their generous hospitality and the ready way in which they shared their memories with me; likewise Douglas Gresham. Others whose conversation was of particular help or interest include John Bayley, John Blackwell, Jean Bromley, John Buxton, the late Lord David Cecil, Nan Dunbar, the late Hugo Dyson, Clement Freud and Jill Freud, the late Helen Gardner, Pamela Haines and Tony Haines, Canon Head, Peter Henderson, John Jones, John Lucas, Charles Monteith, Claude Rawson, A. L. Rowse, Margaret Sayer, George Sayer, Christopher Tolkien and Rachel Trickett. Among those who did not ‘see Lewis plain’ but who know his work well, Humphrey Carpenter and Katherine Duncan-Jones have helped me enormously over the years with their reflections upon this in some ways puzzling subject. Pam Hewitt typed the manuscript, Starling Lawrence, Carol O’Brien and Amanda McCardie gave invaluable editorial advice, and Bill Lyons drove me to Little Lea, whose owner was kind enough to open the front door and show me the Little End Room.
Praise
From the reviews of C.S. Lewis: A Biography:
‘This biography is nothing short of intoxicating. It is wonderfully lucid on every level. Above all it is Lewis’s astonishing fluency which is so captivating. Whether he is describing the method of an Oxford tutorial or defending the humdrum surburban life, he makes you see and tells a rattling good story.’
BRIAN MASTERS, Evening Standard
‘Lean and lively … he cuts through all the pious cackle to the heart of the matter.’
ANTHONY CURTIS, Financial Times
‘Wilson brings alive Lewis the man, in all his beery, blustery complexity. This is a book which renders previous biographies largely obsolete.’
NEIL PHILIP, Times Educational Supplement
‘C.S. Lewis, on his way to becoming a plastic saint or a cult figure, has been rescued by A.N. Wilson in this brilliant humanizing of the religious mythologist. I know of no modern biographer who equals Wilson’s delicacy of touch and sensitivity to human quandaries. An astonishing book.’
LEON EDEL
‘A.N. Wilson’s most engrossing biography to date – and that is saying a lot. Nobody will accuse this book of idolatry, but its sanity, humanity and sheer r
eadability are refreshing.’
JOHN CAREY, Sunday Times
‘Wilson’s book outshines them all. It is continuously funny, as well as touching; it understands its subject perfectly; and it has just the right degree of sympathy and scepticism for what Lewis evangelized and believed.’
JOHN BAYLEY, Guardian
‘Good characters are notoriously difficult to write, but A.N. Wilson, with his worldly, priestlike, sceptical compassion, is equal to the challenge. His touch is glancing and richly comical.’
CANDIA MCWILLIAM, Independent on Sunday
‘Affectionate but very critical, and often honestly puzzled about Lewis, despite a sharp probing of his psyche or, this being Lewis, soul.’
ANTHONY BURGESS, Independent
‘Wilson is at his best on Lewis’s works, the books elucidating earlier literature, the religious pamphlets, the delightful science-fiction trilogy.’
KINGSLEY AMIS, Sunday Telegraph
‘Passionate, perspicacious, funny and inevitably partisan … One of its attractions is the narrative style: as Wilson says of Lewis’s prose, so one can say of his, that it has “a constantly intelligent conversational quality” that makes it compelling to read.’
SELINA HASTINGS, Telegraph
‘Fair-minded and well-written’
PIERS BRENDON, Mail on Sunday
‘Wilson’s level-headed, even-handed biography gives us a balanced and, ultimately, sympathetic portrait of Clive Staples Lewis.’
BRIAN SIBLEY, Spectator
‘Lewis in the Revised English Version, in a book as near definitive as could be found, of supple strength wed to wise judgement’
Methodist Recorder
‘A.N. Wilson writes like an angel, and he brings just the right balance of affection and scepticism to his subject … excellent, understanding and witty.’
NICHOLAS TUCKER, New Statesman & Society
‘The reputation of C.S. Lewis suffered a calamitous decline after his death; its recovery is likely to be dated to this remarkable biography.’
Economist
‘In rescuing Lewis from his mythologizers, Wilson has freed him to be triumphantly human … A brilliant and vigorous example of the biographer’s art.’
Church Times
‘Lively, witty, and written with Wilson’s customary flair’
DAVID NOKES, Times Literary Supplement
‘There are surprises all the way in A.N. Wilson’s stunning, elegant biography. This intelligent, tender book deserves as many readers as Lewis himself.’
PETER MULLEN, Daily Mail
‘A.N. Wilson’s C.S. Lewis is full of compassion and insight. I can’t think of any contemporary biographer who would have done it better. He is uniquely well qualified to unravel the strange components of Lewis’s life; what is ancient in his thinking as well as the modern implications of that thought; what appeals to the Christian, the child, the scholar.’
MICHAEL HOLROYD
By the same author
The Sweets of Pimlico
Unguarded Hours
Kindly Light
The Laird of Abbotsford
The Healing Art
Who Was Oswald Fish?
Wise Virgin
The Life of John Milton
Scandal
Hilaire Belloc
How Can We Know?
Gentlemen in England
Love Unknown
Stray
Penfriends from Porlock
Tolstoy
Incline Our Hearts
A Bottle in the Smoke
Against Religion
Daughters of Albion
The Faber Book of Church and Clergy
Jesus
Paul, The Mind of the Apostle
God’s Funeral
The Victorians
Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her
London: A Short History
After the Victorians
Dream Children
My Name is Legion
A Jealous Ghost
Copyright
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1990
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2005
Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1991
Copyright © A.N. Wilson 1990
A.N. Wilson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007202713
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Notes
Where they are not self-explanatory, references are to the bibliography which follows. For example, ‘Dorsett 70’ indicates that the source is page 70 of Lyle W. Dorsett’s book And God Came In. If more than one book by an author is listed in the bibliography, the reference is amplified by the date of publication. Thus ‘Tolkien (1981)’ refers to the Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Where a cited book does not appear in the bibliography the author, title and date of publication are given. Titles by C. S. Lewis are referred to by name only; full details appear in the bibliography.
The following short titles are used in the notes:
LP: The Lewis Papers (followed by volume and page numbers)
SJ: Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
BF: Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis
TST: They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves 1914-1963
OHEL: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama
Letters: The Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966)
CHAPTER ONE: ANTECEDENTS
1SJ 9
CHAPTER TWO: EARLY DAYS
1SJ 11
2Christopher Tolkien to author
3LP 2.17
4The Pilgrim’s Regress 1.30
5SJ 13
6LP 10.192
7SJ 12
8SJ 12
> 9LP 2.310
10LP 3.25
11LP 3.54
CHAPTER THREE: LITTLE LEA
1LP 3.11
2SJ 14
3LP 3-34
4Decline and Fall 17
5SJ 18
6Bodley MS. facs. d.265 f.4
7LP 3.79
8LP 3.58
9LP 3.109-10
10LP 3.120
CHAPTER FOUR: SCHOOLS
1SJ 25
2LP 3.140
3LP 3.36
4LP 3.147
5SJ 33
6LP 3.170
7SJ 48
8SJ 52
9LP 3.235
10LP 3.225
11SJ 100
12LP 3.325
13LP 3.301
14SJ 103
1515 LP 3.193
16SJ 87
17Bodley MS. facs. d.265 f.139