C.S. Lewis & The Inklings

George Sayer, author of Jack & recorder of the 1952 home-made tapes of Tolkien reading from The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, died recently in Malvern, Worcs.

[Order ‘Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis’ on Amazon.com]

In 1949, the year he finished writing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” C. S. Lewis was leading at least four different lives. His reputation as a Christian apologist had already been launched with several books and a series of BBC radio speeches. He was a charismatic Oxford professor, an expert in Milton and Spenser.

In his erudite new biography of Clive Staples Lewis, Alan Jacobs estimates that from 1949 to 1955, Lewis wrote 600,000 words of prose (not counting work on his book on 16th-century literature).

The creator of the Narnia books has been enlisted to help wean a new generation off paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland.

As the phenomenally popular book comes to life on the silver screen in Disney’s long awaited animated film “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” viewers can discover the transformational story of the literary genius who brought them these honored tales as the life of C.S. Lewis unfolds on the small screen in “C.S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia,” premiering Friday, December 9 (8/7c) on Hallmark Channel.

The dreams C.S. Lewis had that began in the late 1940s were different. Some were frightening and some were beautiful and, as he described them to family and friends, they involved lions, especially a giant lion that had a regal, yet wild personality.

Paul F. Ford (author of the book Companion to Narnia) and his wife Janice Daurio (my philosophy professor, and recently published in Narnia and Philosophy) do a one hour long talk on Narnia and Lewis.

The upcoming movie adaptation of CS Lewis’s book, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is expected to set a new precedent. Far from sitting back and watching, publisher HarperCollins is working closely with filmmaker Walden Media, unleashing a massive, worldwide marketing drive for the books, timed to coincide with the film – and not only for The Chronicles of Narnia, but most of Lewis’s other books as well