Canterbury, England • When he died Nov. 22, 1963, hardly a soul blinked in Northern Ireland, where he was born or in England where he spent most of his working life as one of the world’s greatest Christian apologists.
Clive Staples Lewis was a week short of 65 when he suffered a heart attack at his home in Oxford. The obituary writers barely noticed his demise, partly because he died the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
British indifference to Lewis half a century ago will be examined at a one-day seminar at Wheaton College in Illinois on Nov. 1, co-sponsored by the Marion E. Wade Center, the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals and Wheaton College’s Faith and Learning program.
Lewis may be the most popular Christian writer in history, with millions of copies of his books sold, the vast majority in the United States, where his influence is far greater than in his native country.
Was it Lewis’ modesty or British fear of discussing religion that fueled such indifference in Britain and Ireland?
A mixture of both, said Paul Johnson the prominent British journalist, author and former editor of the left-leaning New Statesman magazine.
Writing in the Catholic Herald, Johnson, a leading British Roman Catholic, said he first met Lewis when he was a student at Magdalen College, Oxford University, where Lewis was a don, specializing in Renaissance literature.
"When I knew him, just after the Second World War," wrote Johnson, "he was famous for his work in English literature. … When we went for walks together, we discussed Chaucer and Dickens, Shakespeare and Dryden. ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ were never mentioned. Indeed, I had no idea he wrote stories."
Half a century later, his books sell between 1.5 million and 2 million copies a year.
C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, on Nov. 29, 1898. His father, Albert James Lewis, was a lawyer; his mother, Florence Augusta Lewis, was the daughter of an Anglican vicar.