Fathers of fantasy C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien shared a literary legacy; a love of initials and a desire to spread the Christian message through tales of myths and monsters.
Now the imagined lands of the friends – and rivals – who spent their lives creating “other worlds” are being recreated in the same country, New Zealand.
Filming of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the second of the classic series by CS Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, has begun in the northern city of Auckland.
In October, the mountains of the South Island, probably better known to Lord of the Rings fans as Middle Earth, will be transformed into Narnia – the winter wonderland accessible only by bedroom furniture.
The adaptation of the best-known of the seven Narnia books is another coup for the Kiwi film industry, after Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.
