Born in Ireland in 1898, Clive Staples Lewis gained a triple First at Oxford and was Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen College from 1925-54, where he was a contemporary of Tolkien. In 1954 he became Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. C. S. Lewis was for many years an atheist, until his conversion, memorably described in his autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’: “I gave in, and admitted that God was God … perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” He is celebrated for his famous series of children’s books, the Narnia Chronicles (which have been filmed and broadcast many times), as well as his literary criticism and science fiction. C. S. Lewis died on 22nd November 1963.

‘I find I am constantly realising that I owe many of my most basic convictions about Christian faith to Lewis’s imagination.’Rowan Williams‘It is really a pleasure to be able to praise a book unreservedly, and that is just what I can do with “The Problem of Pain”.’ Guardian‘A really remarkable book. It says so many things which seem to me to need saying today. It will help many people to revise what they had taken for granted and face possibilities which had not occurred to them.’ Spectator