Episode Details

The architect of one of history's most beloved Christian fantasy realms spent his formative years as a fiercely cynical atheist who resented a God he insisted did not exist, and later entered his first marriage as a legal loophole to keep a friend from being deported. This deep dive explores the unvarnished life of C.S. Lewis, from a boy in Belfast who renamed himself Jack after his dead dog, to a traumatized soldier in the trenches, to an Oxford scholar who became the comforting voice of faith for millions during the darkest days of a world war.

The episode traces the death of his mother Flora when he was nine, the strict English boarding schools he loathed, the imaginary world of Boxen he built with his brother Warnie, his nineteenth birthday in the trenches of the Somme, the British shell that wounded him and killed two comrades, and the vow that led him to care for Janie Moore for the rest of her life. It follows his triple first at Oxford, the Inklings and his debates with J.R.R. Tolkien, the reluctant intellectual surrender that made him the most dejected convert in England, the child evacuees who inspired his fantasy series, the BBC broadcasts on mere Christianity, his refusal of a CBE, and the late marriage to Joy Davidman, her death from cancer, and the grief journal he published under a pseudonym.

• Why the loss of his mother and the arbitrary horror of friendly fire cemented Lewis's early atheism
• The debated nature of his decades-long bond with Janie Moore, 26 years his senior
• How the argument from longing, or Sehnsucht, cornered him into what he described as intellectual checkmate
• Why the BBC chose an Oxford academic rather than a clergyman to reassure a terrified nation
• How the grief that followed Joy's death tested the theology he had explained to others, and his memorial in Poets' Corner in 2013