Portraits of Courage – C. S. Lewis

It is a Christian biography of C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), the Oxford and Cambridge scholar who came from atheism to faith in Christ in 1931. It follows his whole life: his Belfast childhood and his mother’s death, the trenches of the First World War, thirty years in the household of Janie Moore, his conversion, the Inklings, the wartime broadcasts, Narnia, his late marriage to Joy Davidman, her death, and his own.

Clive Staples Lewis, known as Jack, was born in Belfast in 1898. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for nearly thirty years and then Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. After returning to the Christian faith he became its best-known defender in the English-speaking world, through radio talks, books such as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, and the seven Chronicles of Narnia.

No. It is an independent biography, not published by, affiliated with, or endorsed by the C. S. Lewis estate or by any company that holds rights in his works. Lewis’s books are still in copyright and should be obtained from their publishers. This book tells his life in its own words and quotes him only in three short sentences, each with its source.

Key Teachings of C. S. Lewis sets out what he taught: joy, the moral law, pain, prayer, the four loves and glory. This book is a narrative life. It tells what happened to him and to the people around him, and touches his ideas only where they are part of the story.

In two steps. He came to believe in God alone in his rooms at Magdalen, a moment he dated to 1929 but which most scholars now place in 1930. He came to believe in Christ in September 1931, after a long night talk with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson on Addison’s Walk on 19 September, and a ride to Whipsnade Zoo in his brother’s sidecar nine days later.

Janie Moore was the mother of Paddy Moore, a friend Lewis made in army training, who was killed in 1918. The two young men had promised to care for each other’s families, and Lewis lived with and supported Mrs Moore from 1919 until her death in 1951. Whether they were lovers in the early years is disputed; the book sets out the views and does not claim to know.

In April 1956 he married her in a civil ceremony so that she could stay in England, regarding it as a formality. When she was found to have cancer that autumn, he realised that he loved her. The Bishop of Oxford refused a church wedding because she was divorced, and on 21 March 1957 a priest, Peter Bide, married them at her hospital bedside and prayed for her healing. She recovered for three years and died on 13 July 1960.

Each chapter opens with a passage from the King James Version that carries its theme, beginning with Romans 10:20, God found by those who did not seek him. Further passages are woven through the story, and the appendices include lessons from his life, a chapter-by-chapter study guide and a chronology.