Lewis, a brilliant scholar and theology lecturer, whose eclectic output ranged from Christian apologetics to historical studies via The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of fantasy novels for children, died in 1963 at the age of 64.
He wrote most of his work at The Kilns, a bungalow [cottage] that he shared with his brother Warnie and in later life with his American wife, the author Joy Gresham, his partner for a few years before her early death from cancer.
Lewis and Joy’s love story was told in the film “Shadowlands.” The Oxford academic was an Anglican who regained as an adult the Christian faith he lost in adolescence. Gresham also made the spiritual journey from atheism to Christian belief.
Stanley Mattson, president of the California-based C.S. Lewis Foundation dedicated to promoting a renaissance of Christian scholarship in universities, said the unveiling on July 26 marked a fitting opening for the conference taking place at Oxford and Cambridge universities from July 28 to August 8. He spoke of the continuing broad appeal of the writer.
“C.S. Lewis offers insights across a whole range of people from academics to the public at large. Those I have seen reading Lewis’s books include lorry drivers in truck stops with worn copies of his work to academics in university libraries,” said Mattson.
Walter Hooper, former secretary to C.S. Lewis, who unveiled the plaque, one of 40 awarded by the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board to mark notable persons and sights of historic interest in the county, said, “Of the thousands I meet who have visited this beloved house, all have felt better for being in it.”
Hooper noted, “Nearly all return home with renewed purpose and, dare I say it, a lion’s strength. But of course, that it what we should expect for I am convinced that The Kilns continues to be the fountainhead of Narnia.”
The C.S. Lewis Foundation now runs the house as a Christian study centre that is open for tours by appointment.
The foundation’s Oxbridge 2008 conference on the theme of “The Self and the
Search for Meaning” has participants such as Francis Collins, formerly head of the Human Genome Project, who spoke at St Aldate’s Church in Oxford on July 30 on “The Language of God: A scientist-believer looks at the Human Genome”.
