Authors in History: C.S.Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (29th Nov 1898 - 22nd Nov 1963) was a prolific Irish writer, a scholar, novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist.
He used logic and philosophy to support the tenets of his Christian faith. His mother died when he was ten years old and during WW1, he served with the British army and was sent home after being wounded by shrapnel.
Lewis and fellow novelist JRR. Tolkien were close friends. They both served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and were active in the informal Oxford Literary group known as The Inklings.
According to Lewis's memoir "Surprised By Joy", he was baptised in the Church of Ireland, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of thirty-two, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary laymen of The Church of England". His faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broaddcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
In 1956, he married American writer Joy Gresham, sadly she died of cancer four years later at the age of forty-five. Lewis grieved deeply for his wife and shared his thoughts in the book "A Grief Observed", using a pen name.
Lewis's works have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularised on stage, TV, radio and cinema.
Lewis died from heart trouble and renal failure on 22nd November 1963 in Headington oxford, one week before his sixty-fifth birthday.