C.S. LEWIS:
A biography of friendship
By Colin Duriez
Lion. 255 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 745 955 872
As we come up to the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s death on November 22, books and articles are being produced to mark the passing to glory of this hugely influential Christian.
I must admit I wondered what I would glean from yet another biography. I am happy to confess that I thoroughly enjoyed this read.
Colin Duriez, a Lewis expert, helpfully guides both the relative newcomer to the famous author of The Chronicles of Narnia (which have sold an estimated 120 million copies) and the well-informed reader of so much else that he wrote, through his fascinating life.
Atheism to Christian faith
With helpful economy, he describes Lewis’s early years in Northern Ireland, his difficult school days, the time in the trenches of WWI, his first few years at Oxford, which led to a long period of lecturing and writing there, his conversion from atheism to theism and then to Christianity, his scholarly and popular output, his marriage, and then his final period of work at Cambridge until his early death just short of his 65th birthday.
What he gives us all the way through, though, are anecdotes and insights into the people he was close to. For his ‘take’ is to fill in some of the more personal details which other biographies have missed or lightly passed over. At each stage of ‘Jack’s’ life he discusses his friendship circles and connections to other people, and shows how they were very significant in shaping him and his work.
Prodigious knowledge
Duriez’s touch is sure, his judgments about some controversial issues are wise, his knowledge is prodigious but not at all flaunted, and his insights are keenly observed. Rowan Williams is bang on when he comments about this book: ‘A fine contribution to our understanding of a great man’. Warmly recommended.
