Books you must read:
The Chronicles of Narnia

Anyone who knows me at all well knows that the Christian communicator I most revere is C S Lewis. Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, in Northern Ireland on 29 November 1898. So 1998 was actually the centenary of his birth. But this is still close enough for me to pay tribute to him and to draw attention the attention of any who might have missed it to the hidden theology of his children’s stories — the Chronicles of Narnia.

First, a little bit of biographical background. C S Lewis’s father, Albert, was a Belfast solicitor and his mother, Flora, was a clergyman’s daughter. Clive had a brother, Warren, who was three years his senior, and it was Warren who, in later life, recalled how one day, when Clive was very young, he had marched up to his mother, put his finger on his chest and announced: “He is Jacks”. Thereafter he refused to answer to anything else, so “Jack” he became and “Jack” he remained for the rest of his life. And not content with re-naming himself, he renamed his brother “Warnie” and that name stuck too.

The boys had an Irish nurse, Lizzie Endicott, and she is important because it was she who endlessly regaled Jack and Warnie with wonderful stories about leprechauns and ancient gods. Listening to those tales was, for Jack, the beginning of a lifetime’s fascination with the strange creatures and characters of myth and legend. And maybe it was Lizzie that Jack was remembering when fifty years later, he wrote in one of the Narnia books about Prince Caspian’s nurse who used to tell the young prince fabulous tales of Old Narnia!

Now when Jack was seven, something very important happened. The family moved to a new house called Little Lea. But it was far from little. Later in life, Jack described it as a place of “long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes and the noise of wind under the tiles”. Those memories are drawn upon to describe the attics in the houses that Polly and Digory hide themselves away in, in the first of the Narnia books I want to talk about — The Magician’s Nephew. But the house had something else that would be of far greater significance for Jack’s Narnia books. In one of the many rooms stood a large, carved wardrobe that had been built by Jack and Warnie’s grandfather. Warnie remembered how he and Jack used to sit inside it, in the dark, while Jack made up tales of adventure. The wardrobe eventually became the means by which, in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, four children, Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy found their way into the land of Narnia in another world.

Not long after the move to Little Lea, Warnie was sent away to boarding school, and Jack spent more and more time on his own, reading book after book from the shelves in his father’s library. He first came across talking animals in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in Brer Rabbit and in Beatrix Potter, and at the age of only 8 he created his first imaginary world, Boxen, that was populated with such characters, and he wrote a whole book about it. Then, two years later, in 1908, catastrophe struck the Lewis family. Jack and Warnie’s mother died of cancer, despite Jack’s prayers that God would make her better. He never forgot the pain and the sadness of that time. And, as with so much in his life, he built that pain and sadness into the first of the Narnia books, The Magician’s Nephew, where Digory’s mother is dying and Digory is tempted to steal a magic apple that can make her well again.

Only days after his mother’s death, Jack was packed off to boarding school in England; and that was the first in a succession of schools, most of them dreadful places of great brutality and unhappiness. Nevertheless, he excelled in his studies and became fluent in Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian. And, eventually, he went to study for Oxford with a private tutor whom he greatly loved and respected, Professor W T Kirkpatrick; and he appears as Professor Kirke on the very first page of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Jack began his studies at University College in Oxford in 1917 but just five months later he went to France as a second lieutenant to fight in the First World War. He was later wounded in the Battle of Arras. After the war, he returned to Oxford, gained a triple First, and in 1925, he became a Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen College. Lewis had always been an atheist but, as he himself put it, “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God ... perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”. He soon became one of the most brilliant of Christian writers, reaching tens of thousands of adults who had never had anything to do with God. But then, in 1950, Lewis published the first of the seven children’s books called the Chronicles of Narnia and achieved fame all over again in that most unexpected direction. It happened almost by accident. Lewis was a bachelor and was shy and awkward with children, but during the second World War, in 1939, four evacuees from London were sent to stay with him. He was astonished at how little they read and how poorly-developed their imaginations were. And then when one of the girls asked him if there was anything behind the old wardrobe in the spare room, he began to scribble on the back of an envelope ... It was actually not until ten years later that the story begun then saw the light of day, but the rest is history.

Let me quickly finish this brief biography so that we can return to the Narnia books. As those of you who have seen the play or the film Shadowlands will know, in 1956 Lewis married an American woman, Joy Gresham; but four years later, in 1960, Joy too died of cancer. Lewis became a Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University. He often said that he hoped that his death, when it came, would be a small affair, wishing people not to fuss over it. He had his wish. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 at his home in Oxford, but his death went unnoticed by the world because, on the same day, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Of The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis himself said “It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our world and the land of Narnia first began.” The Magician’s Nephew was actually the sixth book to be written, but Lewis agreed that anyone reading the whole of the Chronicles should read it first. In it, we are introduced to a 12 year-old boy called Digory Kirke and a girl called Polly Plummer who lives next door. The year is 1900 and the children are exploring Digory’s large house. It is not really Digory’s house. It belongs to Digory’s Aunt — Letitia Ketterley and his uncle — a strange man called Andrew Ketterley. Digory and his mother are living there because his father is in India and his mother is very ill. As the children explore, they happen upon a room in which Uncle Andrew is practising magical experiments. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly and Digory into putting on magical rings which transport them to the Wood between the Worlds, a place with several small pools that are gateways to different worlds. The two children decide to explore the pools and soon find themselves in the dead world of Charn. Once there, Digory unwittingly awakens from her enchanted sleep the evil Queen Jadis (who is a powerful witch) and allows her into our world. Once in this world, Jadis creates havoc in London and ends up stealing a horse drawn cab. Using the magic rings, Polly and Digory attempt to get her back into Charn, but they find they have not only taken her out of London but also Uncle Andrew, the cab driver and his horse, Strawberry. Then, by accident, they all get into yet another world, where at first there seems to be nothing at all. For what seems a long time they stand there in the absolute darkness and silence. Then, just as the witch and Uncle Andrew begin to quarrel, something happens ...

A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard ...
‘Gawd!’ said the Cabby. ‘Ain’t it lovely!’
Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count ... The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars ... If you had seen and, heard it, ... you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing ...
And now something else was happening. Far away ... the sky began to turn grey ... The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose.
Digory had never seen such a sun. The sun above the ruins of Charn had looked older than ours: this looked younger ... And as its beams shot across the land the travellers could see for the first time what sort of place they were in. It was a valley ... of mere earth, rock and water; there was not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass to be seen. The earth was of many colours: they were fresh, hot, and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.
It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright, it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away.

The lion is Aslan — the Christ-character who moves through all the Chronicles of Narnia. There is nothing mystical about the name itself by the way: “Aslan” is merely the Turkish word for “lion”. And the Lion continues to sing and his song calls everything into existence — animals, birds, grass, trees, flowers. The lion touches some of the creatures and when he does they are given the gift of speech. The Witch is horrified and runs away. Then Aslan tells Digory that because he has been responsible for bringing evil into the new land — the land of Narnia, he must now travel to its distant reaches to bring back an apple from a special tree that will give protection to the new world. But Aslan gives Strawberry, the horse, the power of flight and he carries Digory and Polly on their quest for the tree. When they eventually find it, they find that the Witch has got there before them and is eating as many of the magic apples as she can lay her hands on. She tries to persuade Digory to do the same so that he too might become as great and powerful as they are making her. He resists, so the Witch tries another tack. Perhaps one of the apples will cure his mother. Digory only just manages to resist that temptation and he returns to Aslan. Aslan tells Digory to throw the apple toward the river and it will grow into a tree. This it does and it immediately bears fruit. Then Aslan tells Digory he may return to his world with one of those apples for his mother. Back in our world, Digory gives the apple to his mother, she eats and is healed. Digory plants the apple core in the back garden, and years latter, when Digory is an old professor, the apple tree that grows from it is blown down by a storm. The professor has the wood made into a huge wardrobe which he puts into one of the spare rooms in his house.

Here is the creation story as it might have happened on another world, but close enough to what happened on our own for us to see it through fresh eyes. Note in particular, that it is Aslan himself who sings things into existence and life. That is very Biblical. We tend to see creation as the work of God the Father and Jesus as God the Son who first came on the scene 2000 years ago; but if we read our Bibles we shall find that “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Without him was not anything made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus created the world long before he came here as its redeemer. Graham Kendrick got it spot on in one of his hymns when he wrote: “Jesus is Lord , creations voice proclaims it, for by his power each tree and flower was planned and made ...”

The next Narnia book (chronologically speaking) is the one that Lewis wrote first, and its great theme is the redemption of the sinner through the death and resurrection of a saviour who will stand in the sinner’s place.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it is 1940 and because of air-raids on London, the four Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy have been sent to a large house in the country to live with Professor Kirke. Though the children do not know it, he is the Digory whom we met as a 12 year-old boy in The Magician’s Nephew. In the Professor’s house, on a wet day, they find a huge wardrobe in an empty room. The wardrobe leads to the land of Narnia. Once in Narnia, they find that it is controlled by the White Witch (Jadis again) and that it is always winter but never Christmas. But there is a promise that Narnia’s true ruler, Aslan, the lion, will return to free Narnia from its 100-year winter. The story begins in earnest when Edmund betrays his brother and two sisters to the White Witch to get more of her magical and totally addictive Turkish Delight, but is himself then taken captive by her. The Witch knows she must kill all four of the children because of an ancient prophecy. It has been foretold that Narnia will be restored to all its old glory once four Kings and Queens from our world sit upon the four thrones at the castle of Cair Paravel. As the story proceeds, Aslan does return to Narnia and recruits Edmund’s brother and sisters into his service. But before they can rescue Edmund, the White Witch reminds Aslan that under Aslan’s own laws Edmund’s life is forfeit because he is a traitor. So Aslan makes a deal with the Witch. He will die in Edmund’s place. This is just what the Witch wanted. She has the great Lion bound and shaved, then, encouraged by the terrible demons and monsters who are her servants, the Witch kills Aslan with a stone knife on the Stone Table. Susan and Lucy have not been able to bring themselves to watch, but they have stayed close by.

As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept out into the open hill-top. The moon was getting low ... but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds ... They walked to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down ... At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise — a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate ... The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ cried the two girls, rushing back to the Table ...
‘Who’s done it?’ cried Susan. ‘What does it mean! Is it more magic?’
‘Yes!’ said a great voice behind their backs. ‘It is more magic.’ They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane ... stood Aslan himself.
‘Oh, Aslan!’ cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad. ‘Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?’ said Lucy.
‘Not now,’ said Aslan.
‘You’re not — not a —?’ asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.
‘Do I look it?’ he said.
‘Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!’ cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.
‘But what does it all mean?’ asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
‘It means,’ said Aslan, ‘that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.

After this, Aslan carries Lucy and Susan on his back to join Peter and the now-redeemed Edmund. Then, with Aslan’s army of faithful Narnians, they defeat the White Witch and her evil followers in battle, and Narnia is saved. The four children are crowned Kings and Queens of Narnia. Many years pass and the children all grow up. Then one day, while they are in the forest hunting the White Stag, they find themselves stumbling back through the wardrobe in the Professor’s house, and find that they are all children again and that no time in our world has passed at all.

I think that little commentary is needed on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Except perhaps to say that, in my view, Lewis gets it very right when he calls what happens at the cross “magic”. In other words, it defies logical, rational explanation. For 2000 years, people have been asking, “But how does Jesus’ death under Pontius Pilate take away my sins today? How did it take away Abraham’s sins and the sins of all the Old Testament believers?” And for 2000 years, theologians have been coming up with learned-sounding answers that are not answers at all. The true answer is: “We don’t know”. We just know that it works, and that the real answer lies before the dawn of time and is hidden from us. That is exactly what Lewis wanted people to take hold of from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The next four books are, in chronological sequence, The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair. I hate to imply by lumping all four together that they are not as important as the two I have already dealt with or as the one that is still to come. But the fact is that, although those four books are rattling good stories and are packed with hidden teaching, they have no great single theme like the other three. They are all, in fact, about the Christian journey, the path of faith. They contain cleverly disguised teaching on suffering, prayer, the Bible, the sacraments, witnessing, temptation, fellowship and so on. And they are all very worth reading. To give you just a flavour of the treats in store, here is one brief extract from the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The ship reaches the end of the world. Edmund and Lucy and Eustace (another child who first appears in this book) go on by boat until they reach the shore.

The children got out of the boat and waded — not towards the wave but southward with the wall of water on their left ... At last they were on dry sand, and then on grass — a huge plain of very fine short grass ... But between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles’ eyes they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a Lamb ...
‘Please, Lamb,’ said Lucy ,’is this the way to Aslan’s country?’
‘Not for you,’ said the Lamb. ‘For you the door into Aslan’s country is from your own world.’
‘What?’ said Edmund. ‘Is there a way into Aslan’s country from our world too?’
‘There is a way into my country from all the worlds,’ said the Lamb; but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane.
‘Oh, Aslan,’ said Lucy. ‘Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?’
‘I shall be telling you all the time,’ said Aslan. ‘But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.’
‘Please, Aslan,’ said Lucy. ‘Before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do make it soon.’
‘Dearest,’ said Aslan very gently, ‘you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.’
‘Oh, Aslan!!’ said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.
‘You are too old, children,’ said Aslan, ‘and you must begin to come close to your own world now.
‘It isn’t Narnia, you know,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?’
‘But you shall meet me, dear one,’ said Aslan.
‘Are — are you there too, Sir?’ said Edmund.
‘I am,’ said Aslan. ‘But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.’

“But there ... that is, here ... I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name.” When she read that, a little girl in America wrote to Lewis to ask him what name Aslan used in our world. Lewis replied with a series of questions: “Has there ever been anyone in our world who (1) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas, (2) Said he was the Son of the Great Emperor, (3) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people? (4) Came to life again? (5) Is sometimes spoken of as a lamb? Don’t you really know his name in this world? Think it over and let me know your answer.”

And so to the last of the Seven Chronicles of Narnia. It is called The Last Battle and very much looks to that day when, as the old hymn has it, “From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, through gates of pearl streams in the countless host.” At the start of the story we are introduced to Shift — “the cleverest, ugliest, most wrinkled ape you can imagine” — and a rather simple donkey called Puzzle who is always being tricked into doing things for Shift. One day, up in the North of Narnia where they both live, Shift finds the skin of a dead lion and he dresses Puzzle in it and persuades him to pretend to be Aslan. Aslan has not been seen in Narnia for generations, so nobody knows quite what he looks like, and the deception works. Soon, news that Aslan is back in Narnia reaches King Trinian and his companion, the unicorn, Jewel. And at the same time, they hear that the Talking Trees in the North of Narnia are being cut down. So Trinian and Jewel go north to see what is going on.

They are captured and taken to a hill where Shift sits outside a small stable. He claims that Aslan is back, but that he’s busy inside the stable and hasn’t time to be bothered with people like Trinian. He, Shift, has been appointed to pass on Aslan’s orders. But the place is full of Calormens — enemies of Narnia from across the border; and the Narnians who are being told to fell the trees and do other un-Aslanlike things are as confused as Trinian. How can Calormens be serving Aslan when their god is the evil god Tash?

“Because Aslan and Tash are one and the same,” explains Shift. Then, when it’s dark, Shift lights a bonfire and brings Aslan out of the stable just to prove he really has returned to Narnia and just to prove he really has made Shift his deputy. It is, of course, poor stupid Puzzle in the lion’s skin. Everyone is deluded except King Trinian and Jewel who, in desperation, use the magic horn to summon help from our world. The help takes the form of Eustace and his friend Jill who are on the train going back to school for the new term when there is a loud bang and suddenly they find themselves in Narnia. Eventually the children and Trinian discover the truth about Puzzle. There is a great battle at night — the last battle in Narnia. And in the course of it, the Calormens start throwing people through the stable door to be mauled and killed (so they think) by Shift and his cronies who are waiting within. But when Jill and Eustace and Trinian are thrown in they find that, beyond the door there is no stable. There is just the door through which they have come. And it’s not night but day. And there, great and glorious, golden and huge, is the real Aslan. And the real Aslan tells them that the end of Narnia has come. Then the door flies open and through it they see Narnia in darkness. Then every living creature in the land streams towards the door ... and to Aslan who awaits them there. They have no choice. All must come to the Lion. And when they do, some look at him and flee in loathing into his shadow and are seen no more; others look at him, love him, and pass through the door. Then, finally, when the last creature has passed into Aslan’s country, the stars tumble from the sky and the sea engulfs Narnia. And on Aslan’s orders, Peter shuts the door. And then the children begin to discover all sorts of wonderful things. Lucy looks up at the huge mountains towering above them.

And then she forgot everything else because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty ... He turned to them and said:
‘You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.’
Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’
‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are — as you used to call it in the Shadowlands — dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

I must confess, when I read that last few pages of The Last Battle on my own I get very emotional. It is powerful writing and, for me at any rate, it makes the passing from this world to the next something to be looked forward to, anticipated with excitement and with joy and longing. I challenge you to read the Narnia books and get to the end of The Last Battle without wanting to get to the other side of that stable door without any further ado.

Anyway, that’s it. I hope a small fraction of my enthusiasm for Lewis and for these books in particular has rubbed off on you through this article — particularly any of you that have never read them. And I hope that it may have made you want to go and dust off the copies on your shelves or to click on the links on this page and buy them from Amazon.co.uk which is where I buy all of my books these days ... fast service (despatch usually within 24 hours) and big discounts! By the way, clicking on the “Buy now” links below does not oblige you to buy — it just takes you to an Amazon.co.uk page that contains a lot of details about the book and details of price, delivery etc and gives you the opportunity to order if you wish to do so.

Amazon.co.uk is pleased to have Booth’s Bible Brief in the Amazon.co.uk Associates Programme. We’ve agreed to dispatch items and provide customer service for orders we receive through the links on Booth’s Bible Brief. Amazon.co.uk Associates feature selected products in an editorial context that help you make the right choice. We encourage you to visit Booth’s Bible Brief regularly to see the new titles they are recommending. Thank you for shopping with an Amazon.co.uk Associate.

Sincerely,

Simon Murdoch
Managing Director
Amazon.co.uk

P.S. We guarantee you the same high level of customer service you would receive at Amazon.co.uk. If you have a question about an order you’ve placed, please don’t hesitate to contact us.