Shadowlands

Good evening. The subject of our talk today is love, pain and suffering.

So too are the opening lines of William Nicholson’s ruminative “Shadowlands,” the bittersweet, late-life love story of Irish author C.S. Lewis and American poet Joy Gresham.

This past week, beginning November 3, the doors were opened to Narnia and Middle-Earth. Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, hosted a conference which featured Inklings scholars from around the world talking about a various range of subjects in relation to their works for two and a half magic filled days. The wardrobe door was opened on Wednesday by C.S. Lewis stepson and author, Mr. Douglas Gresham.

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.

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

From the cloistered world of Oxford they created two of the best-loved fantasy realms in English literature which themselves inspired blockbuster movies.

Brian Sibley, dramatist of BBC radio dramatisations of The Chronicles of Narnia, has launched his official web site with background information of his various projects past and present.