In 1929 he ‘gave in’ to the idea of the existence of God. He later wrote: ‘You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling… the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet’. But Lewis found it inexplicable that they believed in God.īut he sensed that he was encountering God more and more. They shared a great deal in common with him: a love of old literature, the romantic, heroic, fantastic, mythical, and a distaste for modernism. Tolkien was a Roman Catholic, and was one of a circle of Christian friends who surrounded Lewis. The author JRR Tolkien started teaching at Oxford at the same time. After he was demobbed, he returned to university and began lecturing there in 1925. He was wounded in April 1918 and sent back to Britain. He went to Oxford University in 1917 but joined the Officer Training Corps and before the end of the year was serving on the battlefield in France. At 15 he went to live with a tutor, WT Kirkpatrick, who taught him an array of languages and their literature. In his teens he became an atheist, growing fascinated instead by the myths of the Norse gods. His mother died when he was nine and he passed through a series of boarding schools. He also read prolifically, particularly loving the books of Beatrix Potter. He was a solitary child, although he enjoyed writing stories with his older brother, Warren, often featuring talking animals. Early lifeĬS Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898.

His influence and popularity continued after his death in 1963: a number of his books have been turned into plays, radio and television dramas and films. He rediscovered Christianity in a profound, personal way in his 30s while a tutor at Oxford under the guidance of his close friend and fellow academic JRR Tolkien. ‘You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling… the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet’.ĬS Lewis was raised as a Christian but he rejected faith in his teens.

His work ‘Mere Christianity’ is a classic piece of apologetics – a defence of the Christian faith – which began life as a series of radio broadcasts. These deal with Christian themes such as sin, humanity’s fall from grace and its saving through faith in Jesus Christ.

In addition to his work as an English literature academic at Oxford and Cambridge universities, he wrote a number of popular novels, including the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ series and ‘The Screwtape Letters’. Clive Staples ‘Jack’ Lewis was a writer, scholar and theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential Christian authors of the 20th century.

Best cs lewis books on christianity