Narnia

Helen Joy Davidman (1915–1960) is best known today as the feisty but wounded American-born “Wife of C. S. Lewis” of Shadowlands fame. But the real Joy was a successful writer in her own right—and far more accomplished, brilliant, manipulative, and complicated than history remembers.

C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) was a man of mystery and paradox. He gained renown as the most effective Christian apologist of the twentieth century, but never studied theology. While popularly identified with England, he was an Irishman, born in Belfast during the reign of Queen Victoria. He enjoyed a prolific and varied writing career, yet without flamboyance to accompany fame. His 65 years were filled to the brim with family life and joyous friendships but also physical and financial difficulties and the travail of two world wars.

“WHEN WE SET OUT I did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did.” So wrote C.S. Lewis, describing his conversion to Christianity in the sidecar of his brother Warnie’s motorbike, which took place on this day, 22 September 1931.*